Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo <comment><USER3> We've closed this thread to new accounts because of trolling. If you're going to comment here, please take extra care to make it civil and substantive.

If you have a new account and want to comment (thoughtfully, as opposed to flaming) please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll whitelist you.

</comment><comment><USER4> People can't seem to summarize his argument without getting much of it grossly wrong, because his manifesto was a haphazard collection of good points, bad points, good arguments, lousy arguments, misrepresentations of others' views, and unstated implications. A perfect recipe for people to argue past each other about it.

It's worth remembering that one of his conclusions was to end or replace gender-based diversity programs at Google. Given that, it's easy to understand why people would be upset. If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of that program means those women wouldn't have gotten those jobs.

<comment><USER5> You imply bias in the the hiring process is what is causing the gender imbalance in tech. Indicators such university enrollment in CS programs show that this is unlikely to be the case.

If the author is wrong, that there definitely isn't some inherit genetic behavioral bias influencing job choice, than the bias is happening before students finish highschool.

I'm a proponent for an "early bias" theory because of far lower female graduation and entry level application rates to CS jobs. If less than 25% of CS graduates are female, which is currently the case, it strongly suggests that attempting to make the engineering team 50% female will result in a lower hiring bar for women. That means that the overall point of the authors manifesto, that programs designed to specifically increase the ratio of female engineers are unfair, is true.

We need to do something about the low number of women going into tech fields in school. Punishing companies for not hiring women when the vast majority of candidates are men is a perverse incentive that is biased against men and doesn't fix the real problem.

It's like punishing someone for taking more yellow onions at the market when there's 3 times as many nice looking ones as white onions. The right way to fix the imbalance is to increase the supply of white onions. In the real world, farmers would begin switching to white onions and the supply would increase. Unfortunately, our supply of women is governed by a mostly government run school system that doesn't exist in a world of supply and demand and likes to shift the blame for their ineptitude.

Fixing this at the education level would mean owning up to a mistake. It's much easier to just fine everyone to make it look like you're fixing a "problem" caused by inadequate regulations.

<comment><USER6> > You imply bias in the the hiring process is what is causing the gender > imbalance in tech. Indicators such university enrollment in CS programs show > that this is unlikely to be the case.

You are assuming that women are choosing their college degrees in a vacuum. They don't. They ask: can I see myself doing this job? Is this a worthwhile investment? And when they cannot see themselves working in tech, because they see no-one like themselves in IT, they choose other fields.

> Unfortunately, our supply of women is governed by a mostly government run > school system that doesn't exist in a world of supply and demand and likes > to shift the blame for their ineptitude.

What _specific_ mistakes can you point to? What _particular_ solutions are within reach of the government? Because right now this just looks like shifting responsibility onto the state.

<comment><USER7> > You are assuming that women are choosing their college degrees in a vacuum. > They don't. They ask: can I see myself doing this job? Is this a worthwhile > investment? And when they cannot see themselves working in tech, because > they see no-one like themselves in IT, they choose other fields

I have a hunch you graduated a relatively long time ago and do not socialize with people who are currently in school. People do not have to declare major for two first years in school. Outside those doing pre-med or pharmacy students do not need to take any hard science/math/cs classes ( the later in a lot of schools taught in math departments ) for years. Early juniors are the first ones who need to decide on a major and boy is CS low on that list ( why would one want to spend next two years cramming math, CS, and physics into the schedule class after class when one can take a few creative courses and graduate with liberal arts degree? ).

> What specific mistakes can you point to? What particular solutions are > within reach of the government? Because right now it just looks like you're > shifting responsibility onto the state.

Allowing Jack and Suzy to take $100k loans to for a degree in operating a coffee machine.

<comment><USER8> Echoing another user: I graduated within the past ten years.

Within a group of fields, you are correct. In the business school, the first two years were all the same. In engineering, though, CS classes started first semester freshman year. In the first two years of undergrad, the typical CS degree program had at least 6 courses: 2x intro, Discrete Math, Algo, Automata, and something else.

So perhaps if one had gone EE and decided they wanted CS, they would 'only' be a year back. Going from one college to another within Uni more than a year in, is almost starting over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This feels like the blue and black (white and gold) dress. It boggles my mind that people don't see the fundamental and toxic misogyny in this 'manifesto'. Please have a woman you care about in your life, preferably one in tech, read this and then ask their opinion of the piece.

The "treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group" sentiment of the author is fine except that we have hundreds of years of doing just this in order to oppress and disenfranchise groups of people. Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach and working against institutionalized racism and sexism which has created the distribution of wealth and education and work culture that we have today. Given the massive disparity we see in tech it's ridiculous that this individual felt the need to lambast the relatively minimal amount of work being done to foster a more diverse and inclusive culture across the industry.

If one of the things you have to deal with as a woman in tech is seeing 10 page pseudo-intellectual manifestos about your inherent inferiority at performing in technical and leadership roles published at one of the premier tech companies in the world, and then see that piece supported on the most popular tech social sites then it's no wonder we have the gender gap we see today.

When somebody's views are being attacked for being misogynistic and alienating to their female colleagues, it is not suppression of free speech and diverse political opinion it is common decency. Nobody is infringing on your free speech but they will respond. All of these cries of 'authoritarian left-wing thought-police' makes me think We need a manifesto on White Male Persecution Complex Culture in Tech.

[disclaimer: I work at Google, my words are my own and not my employers]

<comment><USER10> > Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar

As an Asian male who once upon a time had to apply to colleges, I'd like to see some evidence for that assertion.

To be clear, I (and hopefully many other people commenting here) have no problem with outreach, anti-harrassment, and other such workplace training initiatives. It's unfortunate that we can't all achieve a baseline level of civility that abstracts away a person's biological character.

But I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place. This tends disturbingly towards institutionalized stereotyping (e.g. "all Asians are nerdy and softspoken, so we're going to lump them into the same cohort and exert an implicit negative bias against them"). It's also particularly vacuous in that our notion of 'diversity' is thereby premised chiefly on superficial appearances - 'you look different, therefore you must be the kind of different we need'.

One would think the more equitable philosophy would be to strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create.

I find it highly reductionist to conflate people challenging biased hiring practices with people challenging diversity more generally. There are likely some in the tech world who are genuinely bigoted and misogynist. I would hope, however, that a larger share are simply perplexed that hiring practices in engineering would be predicated on anything other than an assessment of raw merit.

My final point is this: as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed. Sometimes that's more obvious to the Asian male who grew up in a tough part of NYC under difficult circumstances than it is to the affluent Black female who grew up in a world willing to bias opportunities unfairly in her favor (when some other less fortunate Black female really needed the leg up).

<comment><USER9> I appreciate where you are coming from. And I agree we should, "strive towards a world in which we stop making exactly those kinds of distinctions and instead judge people on the content of their character and the value they can create." And I honestly believe that diversity and outreach programs are part of that process.

The economic and social structure of the United States is the result of historical processes that were driven by racism and sexism; disparities in wealth and power between these groups continue to exist today due to that legacy.

To take one example, "If average black family wealth continues to grow at the same pace it has over the past three decades, it would take black families 228 years to amass the same amount of wealth white families have today." [0]

While it is a great sentiment that everyone should be treated purely as individuals and it is something to strive for, it completely ignores the economic reality of our country and is an ahistorical approach to public policy or the construction of a hiring pipeline.

We can argue about to what role public companies can or should play to reduce these historical inequities. I think that outreach and education at all levels to increase the number of candidates from underrepresented groups in the tech hiring pipeline is a great step and that reducing these inequities, beyond being ethical, will create a stronger workforce. Others might disagree and have good reasons to disagree. That is a conversation worth having, but it needs to happen in the historical context in which we find ourselves.

Writing a manifesto that claims that the disparity in tech is the result of biological differences that lead women to be inferior at performing in tech and leadership capacities is not the way to start this conversation. In fact this is the exact kind of sentiment that you call out by saying, "I personally find it inflammatory to equate the concept of diversity with differences in sex and race in the first place."

[0] [http://www.ips-dc.org/report-ever-growing-gap/](http://www.ips- dc.org/report-ever-growing-gap/)

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of holes in the arguments you're laying out, but I'll comment on just a few:

* Google is a profit-motivated entity. They have to act in the interest of their shareholders. Correcting for historical imbalances - to the extent that it negatively perverts hiring standards - doesn't factor into the calculus of a responsible corporation.

* Jews were systematically exterminated in a historical event that was even more recent than slavery. Countless more were left destitute. Why are they any less deserving of positive bias?

* There are millions of White people across the Midwest who are dirt poor because manufacturing is no longer a meaningful economic sector in this country. What about them?

And more generally, believing that there's a contemporary responsibility to correct for historical imbalances leads you down a fantastically absurd rabbit hole. We should instead be addressing the present socioeconomic condition (which will indirectly benefit many of the historically disenfranchised). And that is the job of government. Not corporations.

<comment><USER11> Your comment is well-written, I appreciate it.

Several states in the Midwest (Indiana, for example) are actually undergoing a manufacturing boom. Google may have just shot itself in the foot here by making it clear that Midwestern political views are not welcome. I would wager that a sizable chunk of Google's technical workforce hail from the Midwest.

<comment><USER12> Yet, making it clear that this form of behaviour is acceptable would not be shooting itself in the foot, when it comes to hiring and retaining women?

"Come work for us - where Senior SREs will publicly question whether or not you are capable of doing your job, based on your gender!" does not sound like a great recruiting pitch. Never mind that it is also an incredibly shitty thing to do.

<comment><USER13> >where Senior SREs will publicly question whether or not you are capable of doing your job, based on your gender!

"We put a policy in place that dictates that hiring should be on the basis of something other than capability"

"Oh my god why are employees questioning whether hires were made based on capability or something else?"

Seems pretty reasonable. It is far from the first time this point has been made: [https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/5...](https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/uploads/public/58e/1a4/ae3/58e1a4ae36717528770103.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe that equal opportunity among all persons is manifest. But I think the manner in which we encourage/enforce/promote it, especially in the workplace, demands debate. We must be able to disagree with the methods without any question of our belief of its purpose.

The most disgusted I've ever felt at a workplace was when my boss, prior to me interviewing someone, said, "and she gets an extra point because she's a woman." The government punishes us on research tax breaks if we don't have enough diversity.

So what am I supposed to say to this person when she asks what set her apart from the other candidates to be hired? "No you weren't the best candidate, but you are a woman." That disgusts me and I refuse to do it.

My job is not to balance an arbitrary math equation that x% of engineers are supposed to be women. That's an issue far larger and more systemic. It can't be fixed this way.

What I can do is remind myself that my job is to pick the best candidate, and my definition of "best" may be fraught with bias, so I need to be exceptionally perceptive to question what capabilities each candidate might bring to the job that I don't naturally consider to be ideal.

Apologies for the ranting nature of this comment. I feel frustrated when faced with the reality that what the establishment wants are at such odds with my morals and convictions.

<comment><USER15> Until we take away our own biases, the "extra points" for under-represented minorities have to stay.

The example is: Your internal bias is already in effect before you even meet the people you are interviewing. You're only disgusted and aware of the explicit handicap example from your boss.

<comment><USER16> And the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Do you know if there's any evidence that affirmative action would increase, or decrease our biases? I would expect them to increase them:

1\. Our brains constantly build models of the world without us asking them to. They will pattern-match regardless of the PC-status of the patterns.

2\. Affirmative action reduces the average quality of marginalized groups within an institution by design.

3\. from (1) and (2) we should expect implicit bias to increase, barring opposing pressure from implicit bias education - which evidence shows doesn't work (google it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reading the letter, what surprised me was how political it was, framing everything as a "left vs right" cultural fight. I think if it was up to me I'd probably fire anybody on either side of that debate who started circulating shit like this. As soon as you're on that level, nothing good is going to come of it and you're just going to make a lot of people angry, which is very bad for the business in a lot of different ways.

The workplace is no place for politics like this. If you are going to strictly stick to narrow issues that are relevant to the job, then maybe, but as soon as you're writing a 10 page manifesto with phrases like "the Left's affinity for those it sees as weak" or "some on the Right deny science" or "the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics" you are way out of line. It doesn't matter if you are correct or not, politicising your workplace in that way shows a stunning lack of judgement.

<comment><USER18> _The workplace is no place for politics like this._

I agree, but I'm pretty sure political posts were already tolerated at Google. If employees are allowed to post to internal message boards that women are underrepresented because interviewers are sexist or suffer from unconcious bias and should adopt policy Y, then employees should also be allowed to post an argument that women are under-represented for some other reason X and argue against policy Y.

And even if the workplace does have a no politics rule, the proper response should be a reprimand and asking him to delete his post, not a firing.

<comment><USER19> As I explained to another poster just now: this guy painted a target on himself by becoming a huge liability for Alphabet. By stating that he's OK with discriminating by gender, he put them in a position where they'd have to flag him as someone who couldn't manage a mixed-gender team. Not only that, he should never be allowed to give peer reviews to people in mixed-gender teams. Not only that, he's obviously created animosity with other people inside the company who said they wouldn't want to work with him.

Just deleting the post won't magically fix those issues.

<comment><USER18> _As I explained to another poster just now: this guy painted a target on himself by becoming a huge liability for Alphabet._

Sure, but if Google has already decided it is ok to discuss this issue on company message boards and that it wants to encourage debate and discussion (which it has), then it shouldn't then fire a guy just because he makes an argument other people don't like. The principled thing would be to stand for freedom of debate. Otherwise you are just ceding the company to cry-bullies, ceding the message boards to the faction that is more willing to self-modify to be offended at opposing viewpoints. If anything, Google should fire the employees who responded with personal invective against a fellow Googler.

 _By stating that he 's OK with discriminating by gender, he put them in a position where they'd have to flag him as someone who couldn't manage a mixed- gender team._

He did not say this. He is against discriminating against gender and wants the same hiring and recruiting process regardless of gender.

<comment><USER19> > then it shouldn't then fire a guy just because he makes an argument other > people don't like

He didn't "make an argument other people didn't like". An argument other people might not like could be "guys, I think everything in Google3 sucks and we should rewrite everything in Elixir." This was way beyond that.

I'll refer you to this article, because Yonatan puts it in way better terms than I ever could: [https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

> Otherwise you are just ceding the company to cry-bullies

While I was at Alphabet we dealt with plenty of cry-bullies, mostly in the form of conservative-leaning folk who thought they should be allowed to say whatever they pleased because "freedom of speech." Most of these self-styled Constitutional Scholars didn't realize that freedom of speech only applies to the government, not your employer. None got fired, as far as I can tell.

> Google should fire the employees who responded with personal invective > against a fellow Googler.

And yet, this guy who is openly telling the world he doesn't trust females to be as interested as he is in the job should be applauded? Not sure I follow.

> He is against discriminating against gender and wants the same hiring and > recruiting process regardless of gender.

Which is a completely specious claim to make, considering he most likely doesn't know the distribution of gender and ethnicity in the resumes the company receives and he's most likely _not_ familiar with HR practices outside of interviewing. How can he claim there's an active conspiracy to discriminate candidates, when he doesn't know either of those things?

I don't ever recall seeing a diversity advocate say that the employee distribution should match the world 1 to 1. Diversity efforts have always focused on outreach, not on discarding resumes because the candidate is a white male. So he made up a straw-man, then he proceeded to attack it using cherry-picked science while making generalizations about political affiliations.

<comment><USER18> _This was way beyond that._

I read Zunger's article. Getting offended is in large part a choice. I apply the golden rule. If an Asian guy wrote a similar article for arguing why Asian people are over-represented at Google compared to white people, I would not take offense. Maybe he would be wrong, but if he wrote in the tone of the original article I would not call for his firing or say that I couldn't work with him.

 _mostly in the form of conservative-leaning folk who thought they should be allowed to say whatever they pleased because "freedom of speech."_

A cry bully is someone who tries to get other people fired or de-platformed because they claim personal offense. Did these conservatives call for people to get fired? Did they succeed? If not, then good, I'm gladd their cry- bullying attempts were ignored.

 _And yet, this guy who is openly telling the world he doesn 't trust females to be as interested as he is in the job should be applauded?_

There is a enormous difference between noticing on average differences and direct personally targeted invective against a specific employee.

 _not on discarding resumes because the candidate is a white male_

You are making up the straw man because that is not what he claims they are doing.

<comment><USER19> > If an Asian guy wrote a similar article for arguing why Asian people are > over-represented at Google compared to white people

If a _woman_ at Google had written this, the conversation would be similar to what you describe. This is a _man_ making a generalization about _women_. Key difference.

> A cry bully is someone who tries to get other people fired or de-platformed > because they claim personal offense.

That's exactly what they would do, taking offense on all kinds of "liberal messaging." And yes, I'm glad they were ignored.

> You are making up the straw man because that is not what he claims they are > doing

Then what _is_ he claiming they are doing? (It's a trick question)

<comment><USER20> It's a man talking about how men are over represented. You don't agree?

<comment><USER19> If that's what you took out of the "manifesto", then no amount of effort on my part will force you to stick your head out of the sand.

<comment><USER20> I simply asked you if you agree that it's a man talking about how men are over-represented.

You were drawing a conclusion about how his comments are different from an Asian talking about how Asians are over-represented.

I haven't said anything else.

I take it from your somewhat insulting non-answer that you aren't sure if you agree with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group." Wow, what a monster.

The reaction to the memo is really the most damning thing about the whole affair. Everyone is just rushing to virtue signal, to demonstrate their own purity of thought. They've just proved the author's point. Honestly, Google might have even been rational to fire him, due to the toxic situation created by the mass outrage. How incredibly damning of our society.

A particular brand of liberalism has reached the point of being a religion, and the establishment is running an inquisition against any who dare to question its points of dogma.

This is the closing of the American mind.

<comment><USER22> It's not about virtue signaling, he was almost certain to be terminated just because it was a ridiculously stupid thing to say - you can't tell your teammates that they were hired because their employer lowered the bar and expect people not to be upset about it (and that's 100% what he did, he also made up pseudo-scientific bullshit to try to justify it, but he flat out insulted countless people within his company).

Given that the document has (rightfully) alienated women inside and outside his organization, it becomes impossible for this person to be an effective member of the team:

\- The next time a woman interviews for his team, and he votes against hiring, how does the hiring committee interpret that vote?

\- The next time he's peer reviewed by a woman, how does that review get interpreted?

\- The next time he peer reviews a woman, how does that review get interpreted?

\- The next time a female candidate interviews with the author and is denied, how likely is it that the candidate will believe they had a fair interview, or is the organization perpetually exposed to increased legal risk forever?

Such a manifesto is not just fundamentally wrong, it's toxic and shows a profound lack of awareness for any professional.

<comment><USER23> What is the more sexist statement:

a) Men and women should be hired based on merit, and ability to perform required tasks.

b) Men and women are unable to compete based on merit and women need special consideration in order that equivalent number of men and women are hired.

The author of the manifesto was arguing for (a) and against (b).

<comment><USER24> B isn't the argument being made by diversity advocates, that's just the strawman created by people like yourself.

You can fix it by changing it to

b) Men and women ___aren 't allowed_ __to compete based on merit and women need special consideration in order that equivalent number of men and women are hired.

edit: HN comments eat double asterisks???

<comment><USER25> Which is demonstrably untrue; women elect into different fields. The "yeah but sexism..." argument doesn't hold water because women achieved parity in the medical and legal professions in a time of actual, blatant sexism and well before every company had million dollar diversity budgets.

The strawman is much better than the actual argument.

<comment><USER26> Women elect into different fields in large part because of social factors. If a company like Google decides that it doesn't like those social factors, what's wrong with that? Why should social convention rule?

A lot of clumping happens in fields. Tell me why women are better at symplectic geometry than symplectic topology (or not). Tell me why women are better combinatorists than number theorists -- I want to hear something about counting the tubers they gathered. Tell me why women are so much more suited to advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology than interventional cardiology ([https://www.aamc.org/data/448482/b3table.html](https://www.aamc.org/data/448482/b3table.html)). I kinda love all the post hoc analysis that goes into explaining these differences, especially when you have to explain then why Portuguese and Italian women are great in algebraic geometry but French women aren't (except for the notable exceptions like Claire Voisin).

Most people aren't pioneers; most people follow the pioneers into situations in which they feel mildly more comfortable than the alternative. Sexism plays a huge role, while not being the only factor. Is it really surprising that if you put up a "girls r dum" sign on a clubhouse many will find somewhere else to go?

Women electing into different fields is pretty much tautological here. The question is why, and whether it's for reasons we want to support and/or perpetuate. The whole point of the memo at issue is that he figures it's built into women biologically because computers aren't cuddly and that it is thus justifiable and right to perpetuate or support the current set of social roles. I don't know that the guy should have been fired, but it's clear he's not going to be a great team player or supervisor for women.

<comment><USER23> > Women elect into different fields in large part because of social factors.

This article [0] presents a good argument about how and why men and women self-select in to different fields.

0: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yep, after reading the public response provided by Google's new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance ([https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres- the-full-10-page-anti-di...](https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the- full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320?rev=1501965015200)) I was pretty sure this was all that was left.

Regardless of whether you agreed with the letter or not, it's 100% correct in asserting that it's super difficult to have productive, rational conversations about the issue of diversity. Google just reinforced that fact.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps more important (for Google, at least) is to be compliant with employment law, than to allow "rational conversations about the issue of diversity."

<comment><USER29> In California, it's illegal to fire someone for political actions or affiliations.

<comment><USER19> California is an at-will state. They won't be able to fire you for participating on a Trump rally or donating to Hillary Clinton, but sure as hell they can fire you for creating a hostile workplace, which is what this guy did.

<comment><USER30> Unless he can convince a judge that "creating a hostile workplace" is a euphemism for "having a political view management disagrees with".

Which might be easy. After all, he just alleged the Google workplace is clearly hostile to conservatives ... and they fired him for it. The argument that he was creating a hostile workplace is very weak. The argument that Pichai is, is very strong.

<comment><USER19> Right. The reason why this created a massive controversy was because he didn't do anything to stir up controversy. I get it, you really want to give this guy a pass because you agree with him, but reality doesn't agree with you.

<comment><USER30> "Controversy" is the easiest thing in the world to abuse. Anyone who doesn't like an opinion on anything can say it's "controversial" and therefore shouldn't be spoken about it in case it upsets people.

Mature organisations and cultures can tackle controversial topics. Google used to be able to do that too. It obviously cannot anymore.

<comment><USER19> > Mature organisations and cultures can tackle controversial topics. Google > used to be able to do that too. It obviously cannot anymore.

You do realize that it wasn't the controversy that landed this guy in hot water, but rather the veiled attempt at using pseudo-science to create a conspiracy theory about Google discriminating against males, right?

<comment><USER30> The scientists who wrote the papers he cited said he got it right, and it wasn't pseudo-science at all. And there's no conspiracy theory: the things he talked about have happened.

The way in which you describe actual science as pseudo-science because you don't like the conclusions is very scary, by the way.

<comment><USER19> The scientists that wrote the papers were concerned with a single field of science. There's a whole societal context that's not considered, and _that_ is what makes his position pseudo-science: just like phrenology, finding correlation and assuming causation is just bad science.

> The way in which you describe actual science as pseudo-science because you > don't like the conclusions is very scary, by the way.

The way you describe cherry-picked papers on a single field of science as definite proof of your world view is really scary too. How low will you lower your bar to explain the world in terms you like?

<comment><USER30> Look, I'm not a huge fan of social science or psychology myself, but that's because they have trouble reproducing things. The scientists he cited and who wrote in support of him are social scientists and psychologists. They are discussing reproducible results. Are you saying that no psychological finding, no matter how reproducible, can ever be used if it's related to gender?

If you have hard scientific evidence with scientists willing to go on the record and say, no, in fact, there are no innate differences between the preferences of men and women, it's all just lies and in fact girls love computers when they are children just as much as boys and here's why the other studies are all flawed ... sure. Show them to us.

As it is, you look like someone who is scrabbling around for an excuse to ignore perfectly valid scientific debating by disclaiming entire fields as "pseudo science" and "cherry picked". Please debate properly - make real rebuttals with evidence.

<comment><USER19> > the scientists he cited

He isn't citing anyone, he just stated "facts." Please show me the citations? Where are all these papers? Where are the peer reviews on the "facts" he mentions?

> Are you saying that no psychological finding, no matter how reproducible, > can ever be used if it's related to gender?

Going back to the absolute lack of references, I am not dismissing any particular study, but rather the right-wing knee-jerk reaction that "the world is fine the way it is, and people trying to change it are just destroying the perfect equilibrium we live in." It's almost like the last century of social changes hasn't happened. Talk about disregard for evidence.

> If you have hard scientific evidence with scientists willing to go on the > record and say, no, in fact, there are no innate differences between the > preferences of men and women

Cute, asking to prove a negative. Let's use the same idea: do you have hard scientific proof and scientists willing to back it in public that a push for increasing diversity in engineering will go nowhere because the field is already in perfect balance? No? Didn't think so.

Also, I'm not saying there are no innate differences, but that ignoring the current _societal context_ by pushing a theory that explains _all behavior_ using genetic traits is ridiculous. By using the same standard, going back to pre-WW2 (which forced women into the workforce) we could assume that "women are only interested in domestic tasks".

> Show them to us.

Nice. I like that you identify with this group. I'm tired of people pussyfooting around trying to push the rhetoric, while at the same time trying to divorce themselves from the author. Good on you.

> As it is, you look like someone who is scrabbling around for an excuse to > ignore perfectly valid scientific debating by disclaiming entire fields as > "pseudo science" and "cherry picked". Please debate properly - make real > rebuttals with evidence.

Again, show me the paper, show me how they play in the whole context of current society, and maybe I'll take you seriously. Until then, you look like someone cherry-picking data to paint the world to their liking.

<comment><USER30> His original document, before Gizmodo edited it, was full of links that provided citations.

Here are 4 scientists who work in the field discussing the memo, at least one of whom was cited by Damore:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/http://quillette....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170808013732/http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google- memo-four-scientists-respond/)

Now, here's the trick. You got what you asked for. Will you change your perspective? I find myself somehow dubious because the root cause of the disagreement is you believe the world both is and should be entirely malleable, and that forced social engineering (e.g. by firing people with particular worldviews from influential organisations like Google) is a legitimate way to achieve particular ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One thing that bothers me as someone who works at Google (but is speaking purely his own opinion) is that this manifesto implies some pretty wrong things about our hiring process. In particular, it conflates diversity sourcing programs with a lower hiring bar.

As an engineer who's done a fair bit of volunteer recruiting work as well as conducted interviews, my experience has been that race- and gender-specific programs are used exclusively as outreach, sourcing, and mentorship tools. James claims there are _" hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate,"_ which strikes me as untrue. Regardless of how they are sourced, once candidates are in the interview pipeline their are all treated exactly as rigorously as one another.

In other words, recruiters are responsible for finding, reaching out to, and advocating for candidates. Once they source the candidate they "throw them over the fence" to the cold, hard interview process, which involves experienced interviewers and a hiring committee of senior-tenure engineers. The aim is to ensure you can trust that those who make it out how the hiring committee to be top-notch.

After years and years of working at the company I haven't heard even a whisper of complaint among anyone about the quality of people we're hiring. After working with people of all stripes I can say I haven't met a single person where I thought to myself "how did this loser get through the filter."

<comment><USER32> Instead of choosing candidates based on diversity during the interview process the recruiting process select candidates to reach out to by diversity.

You realize that you still are not selecting the most skilled candidate if you filter based on diversity at any level.

<comment><USER33> You are forgetting the diversity itself is valuable. For lots and lots of reasons. One is that that the metrics that people who ignore diversity tend to use are easily gamed: GPA, fancy degree, etc., and may correlate more to privilege than capability. So by casting a wider net you put all the candidates in a more competitive setting, and hopefully force interviewers to figure out what they are actually looking for, not just things their gut correlates with good hire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here's the writing on the wall that I think is being ignored: google has thousands of employees, with all types of opinions. I guarantee you some of those people have controversial opinions, and some of those people share those controversial opinions.

Everybody blames the author for creating a disturbance, but you can't create a disturbance without people being interested in what you say. The fact that it was so widely circulated (instead of ignored like 99% of blog posts) suggests to me that a number of people at the company feel like he had some really good points.

It's scary to me that the "safe space" crowd gets to define what views are offensive, and inherently make it an unsafe (even firable) place for those who disagree to express who they are and what they believe.

<comment><USER35> _Everybody blames the author for creating a disturbance, but you can 't create a disturbance without people being interested in what you say._

This. This is the core of what's going on.

I wish this was the #1 reply on this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I read the memo and didn't find it particularly persuasive; but this dismissal does further its core point. It's a bit tone deaf of Google to fire an employee concerned about groupthink.

<comment><USER37> This is not a workable argument against firing someone. If it were, all you'd have to do is say, "We have too much group-think here," followed by any egregiously awful statement, and you'd be insulated from consequences. That's just not how these things work.

I think any good argument against firing him has to hinge on the truth of what he said _besides_ the group-think claims. Regrettably for him, I don't think there's much to most of it.

<comment><USER38> The truth of what he said has nothing to do with why he was fired. He was fired for not being politically correct and offending people, not because his arguments were right or wrong. People are usually most outraged by statements which are true or close to true but which they do not want to believe.

<comment><USER39> No, we're mostly offended by ideas that are false and actively harm people - like the entirely unproven notion that women suffer from biological weaknesses that make them less likely to be qualified as engineers.

<comment><USER40> differences _

<comment><USER41> Differences that cause someone to be less qualified are called "weaknesses".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is disappointing. I didn't really agree with his premise, and I think he was generally wrong honestly, but I don't think his views were so unrealistic or offensive that this was warranted. I think this was probably done mainly because there was negative media about it. Which sort of demonstrates that Google is just another corporation that doesn't _really_ value its employees that much. Maybe as a collective, but not on an individual basis. I think it's important not to let their moral posturing about social issues cloud our judgement about that.

<comment><USER43> I hear you, but I disagree. If you haven't had a chance yet, then I'd suggest you read this pots by Yonatan Zunger. He puts it a 100 times better than I ever could.

[https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

<comment><USER44> That post is only a personal opinion based on his own bias and prejudices without any scientific reference. Moreover it make claims about the article that the author hasn't made.

<comment><USER45> Not only that, but he spends a considerable amount of time humble-bragging. I found that article unbearable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The best explanation of why he was going to be fired and why that was the right thing to do (that I read) came from Yonatan Zunger, who had recently left a Human Resources position at Google; especially his third point, in the following post on Medium:

[https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

In many way, it was not an unfamiliar sort of rant for the internet, and I was struck by the author's earnestness and apparent sincerity. It's possible that I make too many allowances for behaviour, and it's possible that I'm easily mislead.

I thought his ideas were not in any way useful, or actionable, even had he been correct;

That the ideas were poorly expressed, and full of such fringe 'truths' as are derived, insincerely, from cherry-picked science in order to be sold as snake- oil cures for the cognitive dissonance of the conservative and vulnerable;

That the expression of these ideas was immensely foolish, especially appearing in the context of what I took to have been his initial intent, an appeal of tolerance of diverse viewpoints at Google.

However, I'm always most disturbed by vitriol online when it's in service of beliefs that I share. It makes me deeply uneasy.

<comment> Method-X >You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, __how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it's just not worth it __.

I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Totally not what the memo was saying.

<comment><USER47> You did yourself a disservice by stopping after the first paragraph.

If you would have recognized his opening paragraph as hyperbole, you would have gone on to read a comprehensive opinion from a former Google HR employee on the ramifications of publishing such a memo. He makes very good points that are worth consideration, or at least reading for the detailed insight into why Google's hand was played and forced to fire him.

<comment><USER48> That post is a remarkable example of victim blaming. "Do you know how hard it is for ME now that you've gone and gotten people violently angry at you? People want to punch you in the face for something they think you said, and that's your fault!"

<comment><USER49> I mean that is the job of any HR rep. That's literally the point of the job is to focus on how actions effect the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What I don't get in many of the left-leaning comments is that they're basically saying that 'patriarchy'/society is the only reason why women are underrepresented in tech.

In India/Russia, there are way more women represented in tech then in US. Do you think that these cultures are more welcoming/less sexist to women than US? It should be so in your world view.

I suspect that the companies in these countries doesn't have a diversity program, and they hire everyone for purely business reasons. Why do you think that diversity problems solve anything on the long term?

I live in Eastern EU and many people are actually sexist here ( men and women are favor of enforced gender roles ), unlike in Top 20 countries. But I suspect the gender disparity in tech is better than in the us, or largely the same. Isn't this kind of disproves the notion that gender differences are caused by sexism?

<comment><USER51> Where are you seeing that? Your comment is the only one here saying anything about patriarchy.

<comment><USER50> I was referring to gender norms for women + systemic bias against women as patriarchy. You are right, nobody wrote that explicitly, I just don't want to write a wall of text :) Hence the /society part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> As a minority woman in tech I'm not bothered much by his document, but that's only because I _don 't_ work with this guy or folks like him. His manifesto doesn't pain me, but that's only because I have a secure job coding all my favorite things with people who don't spew this kind of unsubstantiated crap to my colleagues, giving them spurious reasons to doubt my abilities and inherent qualities.

My sympathies are with those who work in more precarious situations. I'm no authoritarian, but I'm ok with this guy getting fired - he used his platform unwisely and at this point the damage control gained by firing him probably outweighs whatever benefit the company might get by keeping him.

However, I'm plenty perturbed by the _willful_ lack of understanding all around these parts about (at the very least) \- how diversity programs work / what they do \- how hiring works \- how oppression works \- how public words can affect others

<comment><USER53> >that's only because I don't work with this guy or folks like him

How do you know this for sure? They may not want to speak out.

<comment><USER52> The people around me might be pondering all sorts of strange things - <USER2> they're not disrupting my life as they work through those thoughts then that is OK with me.

I can mind my own business. I'm not really into the 'dig through someone's life history to find the one objectionable thing and then destroy their lives for it' trope.

<comment><USER30> Damore wasn't disrupting other people's lives either. Or at least nobody has alleged he was, except via the oil-covered argument that "by expressing his concerns he has disrupted my mental wellbeing".

You very clearly cannot tolerate people who disagree with you: you just expressed support for firing him. That means people around you absolutely WILL hide their true feelings from you because they will perceive you as a witch- hunter who is out to get them.

You are making a hostile workplace environment and you can't even see it.

<comment><USER52> I actually think his writing the document itself was not as disruptive as the resulting outrage and debate.

I'm not a witch hunter but I'm flattered you want to assume I'm one simply because I'd rather hunker down and do my job than be forced into a debate about the perception of hiring policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's incredibly ironic that a company that apparently cares about diversity enough to have a "Vice President for Diversity" fired an employee for presenting an opposing viewpoint - to their diversity policy of all things.

Further evidence that Google and the other large institutions don't actually give a rat's ass about "diversity". Diversity has absolutely nothing to do with diversity of thought, and is only concerned with normalizing racial/gender composition to present the illusion that discrimination and biological variation are non-existent (except for discrimination against males, whites, and Asians, because for some reason it's not considered discrimination if it affects them). It's not about doing the right thing, it's about PR - hence the decision to cave in to whatever the pitchforks are demanding.

It's a shame that honest criticism of diversity policies and gender issues is considered taboo enough to get someone fired. If we really cared about diversity, then we'd welcome opposing viewpoints and counter them with facts, not silencing. We have a culture of anti-intellectualism and dogmatism around certain topics that for whatever reason are considered sacred and not allowed to be challenged (ie. political correctness), and its disgraceful.

Relevant video: Peter Thiel: What is Multiculturalism Really About? [1996] [https://youtu.be/E6cxRYgqfHY](https://youtu.be/E6cxRYgqfHY)

<comment><USER55> > We have a culture of anti-intellectualism and dogmatism around certain > topics that for whatever reason are considered sacred and not allowed to be > challenged (ie. political correctness), and its disgraceful.

From a personal perspective I get where you are coming from, but from a professional perspective it makes no sense. There are ways to present opposing viewpoints in a workplace without offending half of the people who work there.

<comment><USER56> That comes across as unfair by definition, but practically there are no such ways to do what you've claimed.

It's unfair in the sense that this progressive or far left ideal is allowed to be pushed onto entire organizations and by the media as de facto "right" or "correct", which is inherently a political position and would likely offend anyone who disagrees with it. If these processes and programs should be publicly enacted on people who disagree with them, it's unfair then to disallow any discussion about them under an implicit threat of termination. Google just confirmed that threat is very real. I know many conservatives here (a classical liberal / libertarian mostly myself, which is far too "right leaning" for this area) who are actually scared of any political discussion due to this exact threat, even though those with the "correct" opinions can openly discuss them without any fear of repercussions. I don't think they should because inherently politics brings out discussion and debate, often vigorous forms of it, and that's not generally the best thing for the office, but because that discussion/debate is effectively banned here, it's completely fine to express leftist and socialist ideals publicly, even if in extremely poor taste.

Secondly, if you were to decide to bring up issues with these programs with a person responsible (for instance in Google's case, this VP of diversity) you'd get a predictable dismissal, or they'd silently drop whatever issue you raise, which means you have no actual means with which to present these viewpoints. She publicly dismissed the entire thing without actually refuting any argument that was made, with language that effectively sounded something like "this is wrong think, and Google doesn't agree with this wrong think." You could do it outside of work, but you lose the context and the specifics of the program, and more importantly the impact any such discussion could have on your immediate environment.

These discussions do need to be had, and where they're being had, the majority of even liberal minded people tend to agree with the author of this piece, but it's hard to know if that's a consensus (even at 500,000+ views for instance on each video on YouTube) or if it's just an echo chamber because even demanding rigor and evidence of the ideas behind diversity is taboo in far too many places. For instance tptacek can be found in these very comments essentially arguing that this topic of discussion isn't open because it's been decided. By whom? How can any discussion of highly debatable topics like this be had if people like him and Google are just going to say "it's not up for debate because I'm right" in order to shut down any discussion before it can even begin, hilariously in this case by likening this to discussing child labor or marital rape? It's nice to see logical fallacies are alive and very well with people who otherwise seem fairly intelligent.

<comment><USER57> This blog mentions some poll that was apparently made among google employees. But link to picture is broken :/

[http://motls.blogspot.si/2017/08/james-damore- deserves-1-mil...](http://motls.blogspot.si/2017/08/james-damore- deserves-1-million-in.html)

> As Damore reminded us, most of the people who agree with him only dare to > agree privately.

> What do they answer when their opinions are measured through a poll run on > Google-plus – which the SJW officials in charge could still hypothetically > access? Some other Google employees gave us the following pie chart:

> 14% strongly agree, 22% almost agree with Damore's letter. That's some 36% > if you combine it – over 20,000 employees of Google. If you add the 13% of > neutral folks, you will get almost 49%, a slightly greater percentage than > 48.5% of those who almost disagree or strongly disagree. Clearly, even if > the participants of the poll face some risks that their vote could be used > against them, the supporters of Damore's view are at least comparable in > size to the opponents.

<comment><USER58> Any kind of article that uses term "SJW" (which is almost universally meant to be insulting) is suspect.

<comment><USER57> Yes term is mostly used as an insult. But there just isnt any other term that would replace it and include all those counterproductive radical left groups that relay on character assassination when faced with logical points they cant refute.

PC culture? regressive left? feminsts? LGBTQIAPK? lefties?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> It was a bit of a Jerry Maguire moment even if you agree with some of it.

At work you should be professional and not only work to make yourself and the company/product better, but the people around you better.

It is mostly not healthy to get political or ideological at work unless you want to divide people. A company and employees really shouldn't get political if at all possible, to prevent a divided customer base. You should treat everyone at work like a client and not go all tribal or into cliques that end up in groups that are constantly complaining.

If you don't like something you can work to change it but in a company the size of Google that is not always possible. If you don't like the ideology of a company then leave. Do a good job yourself, setup your own thing if you want to control everything, but don't bring down other individuals, encourage them and make them better, create respect internally. Don't rock the boat, try to guide it, if you can't, hop on a new ship. In the end we live in a free country but work for companies that are more dictatorial/authoritarian where we are just sharecroppers on their feudal land. Companies are not democracies unless they are really small and even then they are not.

Sometimes manifestos are needed [1] but for the most part it is like calling out an employer. Not only will it probably not change the company, it will follow you around for better or worse.

 _Oh, there's one final lesson: you never know when something you write is going to unexpectedly be published in the Wall Street Journal. So watch those split infinitives._

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/what-i-got-wrong-in-the- peanu...](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-i-got-wrong-in-the-peanut- butter-manifesto-2013-1)

<comment><USER60> > A company and employees really shouldn't get political if at all possible, > to prevent a divided customer base.

The company and its employees have very publicly political. This is the trend for most of the big tech companies. I wish they were much less political and the companies chose more moderate viewpoints.

<comment><USER61> This is actually a good point though.

The companies, should stay as much as to the political center, and it is wise to do so. Google, unfortunately, built its early image as a company with moral, where it nows turns into a burden rather than a legacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> A company that claims to embrace diversity does not tolerate a diverse opinion - right or wrong. I can understand why San Fran is so anti-conservative, but I cannot accept this blatant hypocrisy of being so intolerant and even aggressive towards those who dare to divert! Companies like Google do something worse than censorship - they induce self-censorship, which is something that even the Commies failed to accomplish! Let people think and say whatever they want and only judge them by their actions. The fragile society of today that can't accept anything, but an applause, is doomed! Okay, women, you disagree with his statement - prove him wrong, don't silence him up! If I ever wasted any effort on paying attention to what people think or say about me, my life would've been mostly wasted! Let people say or think whatever they want - I am personally okay with hate speech, too! I'd prefer somebody exhausting their hatred with words toward me than finding a more destructive outlet! I guess, our society today is less mature than ever! We have a bunch of crybabies that need "participation awards" and "goodie bags" and can't accept the realities of life!

<comment><USER63> >I cannot accept this blatant hypocrisy of being so intolerant and even aggressive towards those who dare to divert!

This is not about purging the company of people with different ideologies. This is about a person who thought it was appropriate to publicly question not just the ability of their co-workers, but whether they are fundamentally capable of performing.

Regardless of the accuracy of his statements, this was not the way to push for any change he might have been hoping to achieve

<comment><USER64> I read somewhere that apparently the document wasn't meant to be public, it was sent to a select group by the author and got leaked. So I wouldn't say it's a "public" document.

<comment><USER64> I can't edit my comment but I should have ended with "If true, I wouldn't say it's a public document."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> From the code of conduct of google [1]:

> Equal Opportunity Employment

> Employment here is based solely upon individual merit and qualifications > directly related to professional competence.

How are you going to achieve 50/50 diversity in the company if the pool of candidates is far from that distribution? (unless you go and don't hire the best ones to balance the distribution)

[1] [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

EDIT: As kevingadd said, I might be wrong assuming the goal for diversity target for Google. It can be something more realistic and be close to the ratio of the pool of candidates. In that case I am wrong in my assumption. This is also a good link he provided: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon-v...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon- valley-google-diversity-black-women-workers)

<comment><USER65> You're automatically assuming the pool's distribution matches Google's, which it does not. There are other companies with more representative gender and race distributions.

Even if their hiring pool of candidates didn't have a fully diverse distribution, that doesn't automatically make it okay to have a company that ranks poorly on diversity. It suggests that you should examine how your pool is filled with candidates and whether you're committing serious errors that cause you to miss out on top-class talent - like only recruiting from ivy league schools, or excluding people without 4-year degrees. Both of those things could unfairly exclude people _of all races and genders_ and it would further reduce the diversity of your candidate pool.

<comment><USER44> The pool of candidates are men and women who want to work in tech. I have no metrics of this pool but I think that most probably is something like 75/25 (if someone can provide better metrics I appreciate it). So the bigger the company the most probably it get closer to this ratio. What companies want to achieve with gender diversity is 50/50 because in the world the proportion is 50/50\. But this is not the case for the pool of candidates. So moving far from 75/25 it only make you not hiring the best candidates (because the best candidates pool should be something similar to 75/25 if we assume a normal distribution for both genders).

I don't think it is bad you have a company with a ratio 75/25 but I would think why are less women than men interested in tech. Is it based on biology? is it a cultural issue? We can discuss that, but for me it is clear that a positive discrimination to have a 50/50 ratio it only harms the company in the long term and it an impossible goal to achieve now a days.

> Even if their hiring pool of candidates didn't have a fully diverse > distribution, that doesn't automatically make it okay to have a company that > ranks poorly on diversity

So, how do you achieve this diversity?

<comment><USER65> First of all, nobody said the target was 50/50 or even 75/25\. If you want to know the actual percentage makeup of the population (or even of computer science grads, or college grads) it's very trivial to find those numbers using Google. Google's race and gender makeup (in general, but especially in engineering) is far off the mark.

I already mentioned some of the ways you can expand your candidate pool. There are tech firms in other states/cities with more reasonable race balances than Google, see here: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon-v...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon- valley-google-diversity-black-women-workers) With the vast financial resources at its disposal and the (generally) positive brand recognition it has, Google absolutely is in a position where they could recruit more people of color and more women. They have to identify the right steps to take, and then take them - both significant challenges, especially if your employees actively resist every step involved.

Honestly though at this point, this is a well understood issue. It's not a completely solved problem but many companies have no difficulty recruiting a diverse workforce.

<comment><USER44> Thanks for the reference. You are right, if the ratio they want to achieve is close to the pool of candidates them I should apologize for my comment. But after reading the manifesto I think the ex-googler had the feeling the company was going out of limits and try to achieve an impossible.

Do you have any reference for the goal Google had for any of his programs?

<comment><USER65> Sorry, I had nothing to do with hiring while I worked there, so I can't comment on details of their hiring policies. I definitely didn't observe anything out of the ordinary or discriminatory against white men - I worked with plenty of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'm sad to see this guy fired. He tried very hard to make it clear that he believes diversity is valuable, that discrimination is real and needs to be addressed, and that he was discussing distribution at the population level rather than individuals. And he cited several references in support of his ideas - giving dissenters ample opportunity to attack his arguments on the basis of their merits. The memo had some rough edges and questionable assertions to be sure - but to me at least he came across as a reasonable person that you could have an intelligent discussion with.

But rather than discussing the ideas in the memo, people who have never met him and who presumably don't know the context with which the memo was released have twisted his arguments, made assumptions that he racist and sexist beyond hope of recovery, and needed to be fired.

I understand that his memo was extremely inflammatory and therefore probably not appropriate for the workplace (although, again, I don't know the exact context in which it was distributed initially). But now that it's gone viral - wouldn't it be better to have the discussion rather than trying to silence him and pretend it never happened? Because I am sure there are more people out there with the same views. People who are in charge of hiring decisions, are terrified to discuss their views in public, and are now that much less likely to ever change.

Personally, it's not immediately obvious to me when reading the memo or the cited references that he was wrong. There are a lot of crackpots out there who cling to indefensible ideas and refuse to change their minds in the face of overwhelming evidence - but this guy didn't feel like one of them to me. To me this felt purely like identity politics winning out over intelligent debate and the pursuit of truth.

</comment><comment><USER67> This is starting to be scary. Instead of government companies are acting as thought police. I think a lot of people will watch what they are saying publicly from now on.

<comment><USER68> Good. People should be thinking twice.

Freedom of Speech is not the same thing as Freedom from Consequences. Unless we decide that being "aggressively antisocial" should be a protected class, private companies should have every right to fire employees who they deem toxic for their culture.

<comment><USER69> This comment, forgive the pun, makes me very sad. I'm all for doing something to fight the ideas in this guy's paper, but to advocate for personal censorship as apparently some sort of ideal is beyond my support.

<comment><USER68> I appreciate the pun. ;-)

Anyway, I think self censorship is an expected behavior in a peaceful society. For example: you don't bring up recently deceased significant others, comment on awkward physical characteristics of strangers, or mock the suffering of others, without expecting repercussions. People learn at a very young age that certain topics should be avoided for the sake of "keeping the peace".

50 years ago you could use the n-word in business meetings. Now, not so much, but for a long time many people were "self-censoring" themselves to keep the peace in their workplaces. Some still are, but I imagine that most people these days are happy to be in a workplace where n-words are not tolerated. Not just for their own "sensibilities", but also the knowledge that their black coworkers/friends can be in an environment that is actively less hostile.

What we're seeing is the continuing shift in standards for peaceful society. So far I think the track record on these shifts is pretty good, so I'm inclined to let this ride for a while, even if some people have to keep "self- censoring" some of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> It's crazy to see such overtly anti free speech arguments in the discussion around this memo, even on Hacker News.

"Well actually, the first amendment only protects against government intruding on free speech, it doesn't apply to the rest of us!"

Free speech used to be the thing everyone agreed on. It's like a fundamental tenant of Western, liberal democracy has gone out of vogue.

<comment><USER71> Not sure what you are saying. It is the first amendment that grants the right to fire people you don't agree with. So presumably not everyone agrees on what free speech is.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Freedom_of_association)

<comment><USER70> I'm saying, free speech (an open exchange of ideas, tolerating views that are sincerely and respectfully made, or at least trying to charitably interpret those views, especially if you think they're wrong) should be something groups of people and organizations aspire to.

The fact many supporters of this guy's firing are treating these principles as technicalities is troubling. The first amendment is a starting point, not a loophole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > he had been fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes."

Of course, because a policy of positive discrimination for minorities is not perpetuating any stereotype...

Equality doesn't mean equity. Equality is not fair.

P.S. downvote whatever you want, it is called discrimination for a reason (even if it says positive before)

<comment> brown9-2 Can you give some examples of the positive discrimination?

<comment><USER44> Hiring people to achieve a diversity in the company and not hiring the candidate who fits better for the position.

<comment> brown9-2 Can you give any evidence that this is actually what occurs, that the "better fit" is not selected?

<comment><USER44> They are adding a bias in their selection process with gender diversity programs, so if two candidates are very similar they will probably select the one who belongs to the minority. As it is a minority, you are more likely to choose less qualified people from the minority.

For example, your pool of candidates is 75 (mayority) / 25 (minority). If you want in your company 50/50 ratio, you must leave out better candidates from the mayority in order to increase your number of people of the minority.

EDIT: as other person replied to me in a comment, my argument fails if the target ratio is close to the pool of candidates. But we don't have any reference what was the goal of the diversity program to make any assumption. I assume the goal was not feasible and that lead to the famous memorandum.

<comment><USER72> >But we don't have any reference what was the goal of the diversity program to make any assumption.

In California, when companies are audited by the government to check for discriminatory employment practices, they're checking that the employment ratios are _relatively close to the ratio of the pool of applicants_ , not some prescribed ratio like 50/50.

<comment><USER44> I had no idea (I am from another continent) thanks for the information.

Do you know how they calculate the ratios for the pool of candidates? It seems it is not a easy thing to do.

<comment><USER72> They sample resumes from various source (online hiring boards, recruiting companies, etc.). They also do compare companies to their industry average for their region to see if a company is hiring abnormally compared to similar companies. Companies with 50 employees have a lot more variation than companies with 1000 employees, they're very aware of the related sampling biases and do the best they can, they employ a good amount of statisticians and sociologists. The margin for error is also quite high, the kind of auditing I'm talking about is meant to catch very serious, long term, company wide systemic discrimination.

After companies grow to a certain size (I think >50 employees), they are also obligated to record demographics information about applicants in the form of voluntary surveys in their application process.

<comment><USER44> What? As far as I know you shouldn't put your gender, age or photo in the CV because the company who review it can be sued for discrimination. (A recruiter from US made me delete that information when I was applying to us companies).

Isn't Google ratios similar to Facebook and other companies in San Francisco? (But not to other states).

I am more confuse now after the information you gave me.

<comment><USER73> > (A recruiter from US made me delete that information when I was applying to > us companies)

funny, when I started applying outside of the US, I added that information into my resume.

in the US, there's often an attached (optional) form that allows the applicant to add this information. I'd never really put it together before tonight, but I've always shunned filling out that form. I also shunned saying the pledge of allegiance in grade school.

wondering, for myself, if those behaviors are related.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Good. I get that HN is not into this, but this employee stated, bluntly, that they don't believe many of their colleagues should be there because of their sex. Every peer review, every no-hire, every _interaction_ , is and should be suspect.

Happy where I am now, but future interviews will include me asking what management would do about this, and termination is the only correct answer. This is textbook hostile environment. Anyone saying otherwise should look hard at why they value this person's desire to speak without consequence over their colleague's right to a workplace where they're not judged by their sex, race, sexual orientation, or any other innate attribute irrelevant to their job performance.

<comment><USER75> Doesn't a policy of preferentially hiring certain groups necessarily imply that employees who are part of those groups are less capable? Like, helping folks pass the bar implies that they aren't above it - otherwise, why would they need help?

<comment><USER76> No. It's actually a policy of _no longer_ favouring certain groups (e.g., white men). There is systemic discrimination _in favour_ of white men in software engineering, and only policies and procedures that change hiring away from those things which encourage such discrimination will fix the balance.

You don't have to "lower the bar" at all, because it turns out that the average "bar" is the wrong standard for anything but the most independent of programming (which is _not_ modern software engineering, thanks). My own hiring standard looks for people who love learning, don't mind shifting contexts and languages, and can work well in a group. Some of the "smart guys" who have interviewed with us have been poor choices because they are bad culture fits—cowboys and jerks.

<comment><USER75> Yes, software companies hire more white men than they should, given how many people are white men. The key question is whether companies are hiring more white men than they should, given the candidates available for hire. I don't think it's appropriate to use evidence about the first to make decisions about the second - a company's moral responsibility for playing fair largely stops at the boundaries of their org chart.

<comment><USER77> >The key question is whether companies are hiring more white men than they should, given the candidates available for hire.

There's another question then of why are there only white men available for hire?

<comment><USER75> I have zero opposition for efforts to educate and train women and minorities. I want the _actual problem_ to be fixed, not just used as an excuse to advance one group's interests at the expense of another in zero-sum games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Maybe Google fired him for being an idiot as they value smarts? Unless you're trying to get into politics, you have to be pretty dumb to publish something like this under your own name, let alone distribute it _at your job_. Not a big surprise.

<comment><USER79> this was my take on the whole issue. damore was basically poking Google with a stick and daring them to fire him by publishing an inflammatory political memo via an internal channel - pretty idiotic any way you look at it irregardless of whether his memo was right/wrong/somewhere in between.

<comment><USER30> Google has a long tradition of this sort of thing. It has always demanded that employees challenge it.

Other internal memos that caused internal upset - real names on Google+. Why Google Video failed. A post mortem on Google Wave (that directly criticised ex-Googlers who had been in senior management). Probably a lot more I'm forgetting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I'm not entirely sure why the points raised in the memo are rebutted without providing evidence to other papers proving the contrary point.

If the papers proving that biologically there's an interest difference between the genders are not enough then we could apply some data science.

Let's assume that nothing can force the gaming interests of women and men such as higher pay or availability (this could be debatable in the past). There are studies like these made on over 250000 gamers which show clear interest differences between the two genres: [http://quanticfoundry.com/2016/12/15/primary- motivations/](http://quanticfoundry.com/2016/12/15/primary-motivations/) [http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by- genre/](http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/) The gaming field (and marketing in general) is full of models used very successfully when deciding on a company/business strategy.

Google with their huge data analysis powerhouse could end this debate swiftly in their favor but I fear that either their data proves the writer's points and they're acting hypocritically now or they are avoiding adding fuel to the emotional fire (from a scientific point, Google data would be pure gold for years to come) by not releasing anything (pro or con).

</comment><comment><USER81> Where is Google's rebuttal of this memo? All anyone is saying is "it's wrong" etc, but where is an ACTUAL breakdown of what was incorrect about what he wrote?

I feel like most "rebuttal's" are like listening to Donald Trump. "He's wrong and we're right. We're definitely right.".

If you do have a link, please share!

<comment><USER82> This is a really good one, in my view: [https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so- about-this-googlers-man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this- googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788).

I agree - the discussion around this topic is very frustrating (more frustrating to me than the actual content of the manifesto by far), and everyone's trying to make it so black and white.

I think the current top comment has it right; it makes good points (there are statistical differences in traits across genders), it makes bad points (the wage gap...just doesn't work like that), and it contains some really bad non- sequitur conclusions (measure how a person leads on the outputs of their team, not how "assertive" or "technical" they are).

<comment><USER83> I found that rebuttal less that satisfying, to say the least, given his #1 bullet point:

"1.I'm not going to spend any length of time on (1); if anyone wishes to provide details as to how nearly every statement about gender in that entire document is actively incorrect,¹ and flies directly in the face of all research done in the field for decades, they should go for it. But I am neither a biologist, a psychologist, nor a sociologist, so I'll leave that to someone else."

But... that's exactly what I keep hoping to find, and have yet to really see - and its the thing people, in all their breathless responses, seem to excuse themselves first from undertaking.

The rest of his reply are really expositions about his own value judgements on empathy and politics.

I would find it highly educational and valuable, if someone who is more learned on these matters than I, would offer a good blow-by-blow factual rebuttal to the "manifesto".

More empiricism and less moralizing would be a breath of fresh air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Google really blew it. Just look at this conversation, normally happy and polite HN is barely restraining itself only because of fear of being hell banned and this is a tiny watered down version of the outrage they have unleashed nation wide.

Had they just (as they should ethically have done) privately let the guy know "hey uh, independent of whether we agree with you, can you please cool it because this is USA, Bay Area 2017 and you just can't say shit like that" then just waited out the controversy, this would have all been dead and gone by next week. Now it has turned into all out rage fest on both sides.

Franky I see this as one Google's biggest screw ups. The worst anyone can say about his "scree" (give me a break) is that the guy was wrong and suffers from unconscious biases. Otherwise he was fairly civil and for this he is publicly and viciously crucified and demonized then thrown under a bus by Google. The butt-hurt right is going to have a never ending field day with this. It will be Benghazi of white male boo-hooing for the next 10 years.

<comment><USER85> They did screw up. But this guy had to be fired. Not because they had to make an example out of him, but because by publicly sharing his biases, he's ensured that a large part of Google wouldn't want to work with him.

It's a team sport after all.

<comment><USER86> There's an internal survey at Google that shows about 40% of employees agree with him. They are just rightfully scared of speaking out.

<comment><USER87> There is no way that that a survey indicating that 40% of employees agree with the document is representative of Google as a whole. Google has 75k employees, nearly all of whom are aware of this incident, and a comment below suggests that the survey had <300 responses.

Indeed, a chief complaint in the manifesto is that Google is overwhelmingly liberal. Even the author of the manifesto recognized that his was a fringe position at Google.

<comment><USER88> > the survey had <300 responses

Given the repercussions that's a surprisingly high number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> No matter how you feel about what the engineer said, today is a dark day for freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

And before you reply saying that people don't have a constitutional right to freedom of speech at work, consider that the engineer wouldn't have been fired if he had written a memo extolling Google's diversity practices.

He wasn't fired because because he was speaking his mind, he was fired because he said something that some people didn't agree with.

</comment><comment><USER90> Um, yeah... I'm just gonna go ahead and not have an opinion on this one.

<comment><USER91> "Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us."

I'm also not going to comment on this thread. But our silence will come back to damn us.

<comment><USER73> It's interesting to step into the fray and almost immediately find that my HN points are evaporating over fairly benign comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> This only darkens the landscape surrounding gender issues. Considering Google's flip-flopping from the initial response and their actions after the public backlash- it only seems to confirm that internally there is much division over how this is to be handled on an organizational level. A step backwards for the culture as a whole, if we cannot get the best minds together to tactfully resolve such a sensitive topic.

</comment><comment><USER93> I feel that one critical thing that have been missed by many is that on the meta-level this manifesto largely acts as a defence.

Feminists/whatever have come with far-reaching accusations of discrimination. Often backed by very flimsy arguments that often has a frightening lack of details and specifics. What I find the most absurd is that I can't recall ever having heard of an actual woman who was discriminated, instead one is very happy to talk about various summary statistics.

The point is that these accusations have been raised, and in fact come to be accepted as the established truth. Almost everyone, at least in public, agrees with the feminist viewpoint. Somehow, despite these opinions being universally agreed upon, many are not interpreting the manifesto in the context of a defence against these accusations.

Finally, I can to some extent understand the need for affirmative action However, one question I find interesting to think about is, when are we going to stop it? When has society gotten "good enough" that we no longer need these policies?

It seems society have made very good progress towards grater equality in the last few decades. Yet when reading the news, discrimination facing women and minorities seem worse than ever. Instead of relaxing affirmative action as society is becoming increasingly equal, the situation is the other way around with a never ending stream of demands for new exceptions, extra initiatives and so on.

</comment><comment><USER94> This is ridiculous. He was doing little more than opening a conversation. But since this was against the agenda, he was fired. People still wonder why Trump won, and I can't think of a better example.

</comment><comment><USER95> They decided he was a witch, and he was burned at the stake. That's it in a nutshell.

They won't much enjoy a world where these new rules they've created might apply to them.

<comment><USER96> While I don't agree with a lot of premises of the manifesto, I can't shake off a feeling that I just witnessed something very close to a real witch hunt.

<comment><USER95> While his premises regarding women in technology are certainly debatable, he was spot on talking about the organizational culture at a Google. He couldn't have proved that point any better than he did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> I thought at the very least it was an attempt at a well thought out unpopular opinion that should have at least been met with a productive rebuttal. To fire this guy though, sort of proves his point. You can't speak out against the safe space google is trying to create, without fear. If he's wrong then argue his reasoning. Don't attack his character and silence him.

<comment><USER39> Google is a for-profit, publicly traded company with millions of investors and thousands of employees. They are not obligated to engage in a public battle of ideas with an employee. They have made their values incredibly clear - if he disagrees with them strongly enough to publish a manifesto, he probably should have already left to find a place where he fit in better. Perhaps Palmer Lucky will hire him.

<comment><USER97> He didn't make it public, he was advocating for something he thought was for the better. Of course work places can be ruled in any number of ways. I think a lot of peoples perception of Google is that they are pro-intellectualism and encouraged diverse opinions. This shows otherwise. I'm sure he'll be fine, I'm actually not to worried about him. I'm more worried that something like this, something so rooted in good faith and scientific basis, could get someone fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> As a white man, I have concerns that my ethnic / gender group is being persecuted. How should I raise these issues for discussion, in a professional environment?

<comment><USER43> Well, I can tell you were NOT to have that discussion: publicly at work.

That said, as a white man myself, I would argue very strongly that I am not being "persecuted".

Synonyms for this word include: oppress, abuse, victimize, ill-treat, mistreat, maltreat, tyrannize, torment, torture; martyr.

I've never felt any of the above.

As a white english-speaking immigrant I've never been accosted about my status. I've never been given shit for being an illegal immigrant. I've never been given crap for "stealing American jobs" (and for the record, I am now a US citizen, no arrests, tax-paying, picket fence).

But I see it very often to legal non-white immigrants.

So you think YOU or your race/gender has been persecuted? You (like me) have no idea what that truly means.

<comment><USER98> What if my grievance is with the people / culture at work?

<comment><USER43> Fair question. That is something you'd take to HR.

If you think you can't have that conversation with HR (fear of retaliation or mis-understanding etc), then I perhaps a consultation with a attorney that specializes in labor law and the workplace.

That is what I'd do if I felt it was a real problem.

<comment><USER99> Don't talk to HR. It will escalate the entire situation and you gain nothing. It's like going to the teacher when you don't get along with kids at school - everyone's gonna hate you even more. You need to deescalate the situation and talk to people personally. If that doesn't help, it is time to move on...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I'm going to invoke Occam's razor here. Let's simplify diversity and just look at height. Let's assume men that are short and men that are tall are biologically equivalent, meaning biological trait that might surface are evenly distributed. Now let's inject 100 men with varying height into the general population, and... Uh oh there's a skew in leadership position and income. Taller men have better positions and have higher income.

People who are taller all have tall coworkers. They work for a boss that's a little bit taller than them. Some of them start thinking that you know this is probably just natural, men who are shorter are just biologically unsuited to be a leader. They aren't aggresive enough and they just don't have as much drive, it's probably just written in their DNA.

The short men no matter how much they perform or how brilliant they are always seem to be sidelined for promotion. Some of them make it pretty far but they're performing 50x compared to their peers, and theyre always sidelined when it comes to executive promotions. Other executives think: "this guy is brilliant but what would people think about us... We better promote the other less brilliant tall guy. We could retain investor confidence." Some of them break out and try to start a company. They can't get any funding, and no one wants to join their company. People think its a company run by a short guy, this guy is brilliant but he's not going to do well in the long term, so they end up joining start ups that have tall guys.

This network effects over a million times.

Now let's take people's perception, and assume people perceive men and women exactly the same. The catch here is that women are one standard deviation shorter than men. Just from height you'll see a discrepancy between men and women representation in leadership positions. Let's end height discrimination first. I believe this is a simpler explanation of the discrepancies in representation.

</comment><comment><USER101> If this was in Norway the company would go out and say that this is not their stand, and people would try to explain the person why his views is so wrong and hurting in many ways. Fire the person because of something like this would be illegal, and I think it only grows more people with the same thoughts/ideology. I have no sympathy to James, but what Google does here I belive is more wrong in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER102> Google's public code of conduct: [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code- of-conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

<comment><USER103> At the bottom: "Last updated August 7, 2017"

Wonder what changed today?

<comment><USER104> Two things:

\- Each Googler is expected to do his or her utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias, and unlawful discrimination.

\+ Googlers are expected to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias, and unlawful discrimination.

\- Make sure that information that is classified as "Need to Know" or "Confidential" in Google's Data Security Guidelines is handled in accordance with those Guidelines and Google's Data Security Policy.

\+ Make sure that information that is classified as "Need to Know" or "Confidential" in Google's Data Classification Guidelines is handled in accordance with those Guidelines and Google's Data Security Policy.

<comment><USER105> Removal of gendered language.

Interesting though. Does it change the meaning subtly?

"Each Googler is expected to do their utmost" to "Googlers are expected to do their utmost"

It seems to me like it's saying "you should also be expected to be as a group" But the change is so small or subtle I could be reading into this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you haven't read this post by Yonatan Zunger (former Googler) that deals with this specific situation, then I suggest you do:

[https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

It makes the clear case that this employee went beyond opinion and created a harmful situation for himself and his colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER106> Can you imagine the outrage there'd be if a company with a more conservative- learning workforce fired someone for circulating a liberal-leaning memo?

Two caveats: I'm not saying this is a perfect analogy, though I think it's good enough to make the point. And keep in mind you'd have lots of people in that situation making the same sorts of claims that the reasoning in the memo was flawed etc etc.

BTW, before anyone jumps to conclusions, I am not a conservative.

</comment><comment><USER107> Wow. I have so much to say about this, but I'd rather not be publicly crucified for this.

Chilling indeed, so much for free speech and rational discussion.

</comment><comment><USER108> I think the author made the mistake of using psychosocial nomenclature, like the big 5 personality traits[1]. Without spending more time explaining the language he was using.

I think people will respond negativity to being told that their group is more likely to be high in Neuroticism. Among other things.

It seems clear to me that his memo was heavily inspired by Jordan Peterson, and to a reader without some basic introduction to psychology the assertions he make can seem inflammatory.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits)

</comment><comment><USER109> fired from a tech company for "perpetuating gender stereotypes"...

What in the world is happening right now? This is absurd beyond reason.

<comment><USER110> > fired from a tech company for "perpetuating gender stereotypes"...

Fired from a tech company for publishing a company-wide memo insinuating that some of his coworkers are, on average, at a biological disadvantage for the type of work they do and suggesting that some subset of them haven't achieved their position based on merit.

<comment><USER111> And listed data and studies to back up his claim. That it is controversial, does not mean it isn't true, and you haven't refuted it, simply stated it as if on it's face should have been grounds for dismissal.

All we really know is that the Silicon Valley thought bubble, and political intolerance is extreme to such a degree that people have to watch what they say and think at all times so as not to anger the thought police. The moral superiors.

No room for discussion. No room for debate. Just fall in line and be sure to advertise your virtue and 100% agree with views that the political left mandates you to hold.

<comment><USER112> Listed "data" and "studies" doesn't suddenly make you right. Studies are far from perfect, especially in this field, and even more so when tons of other studies contradict these conclusions. You don't get to wave a magic want and say "I'm using FACTS so you're wrong!!"

<comment><USER111> So what we have is a debate or a discussion.. a disagreement.

Implying that should result in this guy getting fired is pretty ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Not a lawyer, but will he have a case to sue for wrongful termination? I guess without seeing the employee contract and Code of Conduct, it is hard to say.

<comment><USER114> Unless the Google contract departs from boilerplate California employment contracts in ways highly disadvantageous to one of the largest, most legally savvy firms in the state, it is unlikely that Google needs a documented reason to fire anybody, so long as they aren't retaliating against them for concrete protected concerted actions in labor organization or retaliating against them for defending their rights as a protected class under federal law.

Doubtless a real lawyer will come along here and clarify, but a good shorthand is: you can be fired in virtually any state in the union for expressing political opinions.

<comment><USER115> At least one California lawyer thinks that this kind of firing over a call for a change in labor practices is illegal:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for- google...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google-to- punish-engineer-over-anti-diversity-memo-commentary.html)

> First, federal labor law bars even non-union employers like Google from > punishing an employee for communicating with fellow employees about > improving working conditions.

> Second... California law prohibits employers from threatening to fire > employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular > political course of action.

> Third, the engineer complained in parts of his memo about company policies > that he believes violate employment discrimination laws... It is unlawful > for an employer to discipline an employee for challenging conduct that the > employee reasonably believed to be discriminatory, even when a court later > determines the conduct was not actually prohibited by the discrimination > laws.

<comment><USER114> I doubt it, but let me say that _I really hope it 's true_ that what this guy wrote qualifies as a Protected Concerted Action under the NLRA, because Silicon Valley could badly use an education in the protections of the NLRA. From what I can see from this vantage, the largest companies in the valley are utterly dependent on the compliance of their employees to function, and those employees are being bought off for table scraps.

<comment><USER73> god I hope we don't wind up with a SWE labor union because of this

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> Here is Dr. Louanne Brizendine explaining the differences between the female and male brains at Google:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_uGr1ZOn4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_uGr1ZOn4)

</comment><comment><USER117> A hiring process is by nature a discriminatory event. Right?

You have a pile of resumes and you discriminate between the candidates during the selection process. This happens on a number of different criteria.

The criteria that we should not discriminate on are sex and race.

Anyone that doesn't agree with this is out of the mainstream.

The issue is that if you cannot discriminate on sex and race, and 90% (made up number) of your qualified candidates are men that are asian or white, then 90% of your workforce will be men that are asian or white.

So, then you have to make hard choices, guided by the current laws, and a desire to create a corporate culture.

If more than 50% of your users are women but only 10% (again, made up number) of your employees are women. AND you can legally choose a qualified woman over a qualified man. Then you have a good reason to hire the qualified woman over the qualified man.

TLDR; discrimination is part-and-parcel of the hiring process. discrimination on the basis of sex or race could be a legal and accepted thing for a company to do. discriminating on the basis of sex or race for bad reasons is bad.

<comment><USER65> You can address an unbalanced hiring pool of qualified candidates (i.e. your 90%) by expanding the hiring pool (through various methods) until its balance comes closer to the balance of the overall population. Doing this doesn't require discriminating against anyone. See [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon-v...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon- valley-google-diversity-black-women-workers) for example, there are other tech companies with race balance much closer to national averages. It's certainly possible to pull more women and people of color into your hiring pool, and you don't ever need to turn down a single person based on their white skin color to do it. The universities you hire from and your degree requirements for applicants can both have a significant impact on things and it's easy to adjust those.

The downside is that some qualified candidates (white man and woman of color alike) will potentially miss out on jobs once the candidate pool is grown, because you've pulled a bunch of extremely talented people into the pool who set the bar higher. That could certainly make people feel discriminated against if they don't have enough insight into the process.

<comment><USER118> Or Google can reduce the overrepresented candidate pool to match that of underrepresented by randomly select the appropriate number of candidates from the overrepresented (i.e. Randomly reject, lol). This should have no effect on te bar each candidate is expected to pass, underrepresented or not.

Interestingly this hypothetical scenario would probably increase the false negative rate for overrepresented applicants due to random rejection, which effective lowers false negative rate for underrepresented applicants relative to the overrepresented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> I don't agree with the firing. This directly fuels the view point that free speech for liberals is valid as long as the views are palatable to liberals. Such things achieve nothing but pushes both sides further into their own echo chambers and the world into a deeper abyss. It sort of sends out a message that only certain viewpoints are allowed to be expressed freely. What we need rather is a fierce and open debate with views from all sides expressed freely.

</comment><comment><USER120> It's strange how people who say that certain groups are inherently better at something are invariably a member of that group.

To put it more bluntly: it's strange that the people saying white men are just inherently better at stuff are always white men. Oh well, I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

When there are real, strong differences, usually a diverse group of people are willing to accept it. Plenty of women will tell you that men are better on average at lifting heavy objects or reaching the top shelf.

But ask about computer programming, and it's invariably the supposed "in" group saying they're better. What a strange coincidence.

<comment><USER121> But no one said that?

Could you provide text snippets where this was said?

<comment><USER120> Where what was said? If you're referring to white men being better at stuff, the manifesto that got this guy fired says straight out that men are better than women, on average, at computer programming.

<comment><USER121> Where is the text snippet where he writes that "straight out"?

[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles- Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)

Here's the unedited document with all the references. I'd like to see that.

All of the data he shows are what scientific research in psychology concluded. He then does some leaps to deduce why some of these differences, that are scientific facts, could create inequalities. This part asks for discussion which he didn't get at all. Of course his theorizing is not a fact, therefore he wants discussion, additional data, and openess of some of these diversity processes.

"As society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider."

The above happens in Norway and Sweden where women hate STEM even more. Yet, I believe, both have schools not using any gender role bias for decades.

Unconscious bias training that Google uses is in worst case brain washing, best case does not work at all. So that critique was in place.

<comment><USER120> From the introduction: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."

The weasel-word "may" rescues this from being an outright statement of fact. However, he then spends much of the rest of the document explaining how it _is_ this way. For example:

"Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)."

In other words, software engineering as it currently stands is much more suitable for men than women. We may be able to modify it to some extent to help that, but we probably can't modify it so much that women become equally good at it.

<comment><USER121> "equally good at it". I do not think this is where we can jump from that statement.

There was no where a statement saying women are of inferior abilities because scientifically, they are not. There were statements that showed women value some things differently than men. For example, lack of dress code is a big turn off for women, yet men do not care.

If you need to navigate in that kind of culture you should make work positions appealing to women. Is it possible to make CS engineering appealing? Of course it is. Stanford did it. Make it more aesthetically pleasing, less sweat- stinking geeky and women will come.

Can an engineering job be more social? Yes, in some engineering roles. In some it cannot. These roles will on average be less appealing to women. Maybe there's a lack of work processes making use of these social working activities. Maybe there aren't many that could incorporate a social component. This would mean women might not like these kinds of work environments. That is the only thing implied by the text you quoted.

No where in the document was there an implication that women are of inferior abilities. It's just an interpretation that everyone decided to use.

<comment><USER120> Is there really a difference? If you're fundamentally skilled at something but not interested in it, are you equally good at the job as someone both fundamentally skilled and interested?

For another example, he says that women are more driven to have a work-life balance. He cautions about making any changes to accommodate this, because "currently those willing to work extra hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may have disastrous consequences." His suggestion here is to let women have part-time jobs.

The way I read this is: doing really good work requires extra hours and stress, which women won't do. If we try to accommodate women by no longer rewarding people who reject a work-life balance, we'll hurt the company. Women are, on average, less valuable to the company because they're less likely to work extra hours or take on extra stress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> So much of the discussion is about what he said has any truth. I think this is beside the question. He Wrote and distributed materials criticizing his employer's core HR mission while alienating coworkers.

If you're a person targeted in his manifesto, I'd suspect you'd no longer want to work alongside him. That's reason enough to fire him on the spot. He's creating a hostile work environment via coworkers and media.

For those that doubt it, I say try it at your job and see what comes of it.

Honestly, what did he think would happen?

<comment><USER123> Seems more like the working environment is already hostile to people with similar ideas, rather than this person creating anything.

Which I think was also his point. Thus the name of the document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER124> Dare I say, but people should be employed for their abilities not their gender, race or value to some checklist.

Those who develop greater abilities through study should find greater opportunities in work, regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation or negative score on some diversity checklist.

<comment><USER125> one would think right...

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> What we all in tech are forgetting is that this gender gap exists in all fields, including medicine. The more interesting problem with medicine is that the pipeline is basically at equity (close to 50/50 male/female graduates).

However, according to this article ([https://amino.com/blog/how-the-gender- gap-is-shifting-in-med...](https://amino.com/blog/how-the-gender-gap-is- shifting-in-medicine-medical-specialties-by-gender/)) even medicine is seeing severe gender gaps based on the specialty that is chosen.

This was their analysis:

Only 7% of all orthopedic surgeons; 15% of orthopedic surgeons beginning their practice in 2015

9% of urologists; 21% of urologists beginning their practice in 2015

13% of cardiologists; 25% of cardiologists beginning their practice in 2015

Why are there so few women working in these specialties? According to Mayo Clinic's Ian Mwangi, "There's a stereotype that orthopedic surgeons are jocks, that the field requires brute strength." There's a lengthy feature article on Orthopedics Today that explores other reasons women aren't entering orthopedics, including less exposure to the field in medical school, discouragement among advising faculty and deans, and the perception of poor work-life balance.

NPR explains that there may be gender disparity among urologists because of a "misconception of the field ... that urologists treat male problems like prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction."

Women seeking a career in cardiology face similar deterrents, including the "impairments to family planning, poor work-life balance, and perceived radiation risks," according to this fellows' perspective published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology.

In most of my research, I found that a lack of female role models was also a key reason why more women didn't enter these specialties, echoing a trend across industries. Doximity reports that women represent only 22% of physician leaders.

</comment><comment><USER127> Dude gets fired for violating company policy, people have been fired for much less. Why is everyone getting their panties in a knot? Why isn't this post being flagged like all the other ones about the manifesto itself?

<comment><USER128> Probably rhetorical, but I can take a stab at an answer! This story is interesting to me, personally, because I'm now just a little bit less naive about how things work around here. The Brendan Eich fiasco startled me a bit, but didn't really register long-term. However, I'm now starting to realize that my worldview, my political beliefs, and my faith will likely be important factors (read: challenges!) in the evolution of my career over the course of the next 20 or 30 years -- something that I had never seriously considered previously, since I'm just a software developer. Interesting times!

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> Reposting a comment I posted in another thread with more details.

Fun anecdote: My girlfriend's mom has a double PhD in both computer science and accounting. Her dad is also an electric engineer. She is also really good in math.

She passed advanced math classes in a few months of studying. Did her algebra and got into a top school for engineering. After months of me persuading switches to SWE.

Few semester after despite having top grades she drops out of CS and now does design

I've asked her many times what happened and the only reply I got was: it's not for me. Given her incredible talent I find this hard to believe.

I still catch her checking out CS course material and even her mom argues with her over this. She can get her a top position in SWE team at top company as she is a senior analyst there.

Yet she still insists she likes graphic design more. Either we are pushing women too much to get into CS or there is something inherently wrong in this field that disallows them to get in, it might be the culture, it might be the hours, i don't know..

For her, I know for a fact the issue wasn't that she found it too difficult, she had top grades during her last semester in CS

I should also mention both the university and the company have diversity programs in place to embrace minorities.

Anyways, just my own personal experience with this issue

I am really baffled.

<comment><USER130> I'm curious as to what her thoughts are on the author's opinion. Have you talked about this with her? (might be a dangerous conversation)

<comment><USER129> To be honest I've been both terrified and incredibly curious myself to seek her thoughts on this subject.

In part because the reply might not match what I have in mind.

I know we all want women to thrive in software and there is absolutely no reason for a skilled person like her to simply drop out, especially not after the serious effort that was put in.

Part of me is sadden by the thought that we may not have the next female equivalent of Linus Torvalds, because we somehow failed to make CS a welcoming field for minorities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> It doesn't matter how good or bad the reasoning in the memo was, nor whether you think the conclusions it draws were good or bad, writing and circulating a memo like that should not be grounds for firing someone. I think this is Google being evil, and makes me seriously question whether I'd ever want to work there.

</comment><comment><USER131> Somewhat related to the issue at hand and representative of the current, very charged landscape on social issues, is this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8)

The speaker makes the case that current social conflicts at many American universities – though probably representative of the general population as well – arise because people are pursuing two, potentially incompatible goals: truth and social justice. I think it's a highly informative video.

Of course, I'd love to watch other videos contradicting or challenging this one, if anyone can provide some links.

</comment><comment><USER132> Rule #1:writing dumb things gets you fired.

Rule #2: if you are inclined to write dumb things, bounce it off a buddy before you press Enter/send

Rule #3; pretend you want to be on the Supreme Court. When you write an opinion, even at a young age, do not write controversial things. Keep low to the ground

</comment><comment><USER133> This seems like a really bad move to me, unless of course, there were other issues with the said employee's work. Instead of removing all proponents of a different (and most probably incorrect but let's leave that aside) ideology, they could have started workshops, lecture series, heck even one on one conversations to make him and others see why their views are damaging to the Google culture and society in general, and maybe they would see why they're wrong. That is what the Google I know would do. Alas, it seems the Google I know is no more.

</comment><comment><USER134> What I get from all this debacle is that Google is still failing to be the genious hivemind it wants to be.

It has its fair share of employees with huge blind spots about their own, well, privilege, while its HR people are just as prone to spasmodic, unreasonable reactions as those of any other company.

That old, discarded motto should rather have been "don't be _stupid_ ".

</comment><comment><USER65> Intentionally violating your employment agreement and expecting not to be disciplined for it is definitely a strange way to demonstrate your innate superiority over the other gender. Either this guy genuinely believed he was so right that he wouldn't get punished for this, or he wanted to quit and decided to try to martyr himself.

I'm personally not a fan of the memo's content but even if I were, it demonstrates incredibly poor judgement. Posting this sort of thing on internal work message boards and signing it with your name is just plain silly. If you want to have your 'rational discussion' about gender and race in tech and not get penalized for violating an _agreement you signed_ governing your conduct, then _do it on your own time_ and using your own equipment instead of your employer's equipment. This isn't hard. How does someone manage to get a PhD without acquiring a basic understanding of cause and effect?

</comment><comment><USER135> I am white cis male. I am damned in this topic by definition. But still.

I am pretty sure it is all about money, not engineering. Women are not inferior on average, but they are different. This is fact. There are jobs which are much harder for male to handle compared to female, and I am not talking about child care or something, but mostly stressful jobs requiting multitasking. Males are bad at multitasking on average (not to be confused with time management and doing many things, but sequentially).

I know a guy, a chess trainer who trains girls. He always tries to schedule matches based on trainee period cycle to let his girls do their best. That is intellectual sport, chess, fair play. This is damn biology, one cannot deny it by corporate policy.

So the fact is, like it on not, there are jobs which male handle better on average, there are jobs which women handle better on average, just because brain of both sexes is equally effective, but not equal. And this is great. I am more than happy to ask my female colleague for something she is better at (and I am not talking about delegating boring staff, I have male juniors for this), because diversity is good.

Root of the problem, as I see it, is that jobs male are better on average are also much better paid on average. It is not fair, but is another fact one cannot deny. Nobody ever discussed males being underpaid. Nobody ever discussed why we have too many women at some jobs (like cashier or janitor in my country) and how we should help men get equal and have a chance to get that jobs too. Because honestly, that jobs are too hard for male to handle and not paid well enough to fight for them. I saw a few man cashier working side-by- side with women colleagues. It was pure struggle, they were so over-stressed trying to serve 3-4 customers in parallel, I really pity them. But being software engineer with 6-digit salary is quite different story. Everybody wants it because everybody wants to be cool and rich.

<comment><USER136> > I know a guy, a chess trainer who trains girls. He always tries to schedule > matches based on trainee period cycle to let his girls do their best.

this seems really crazy to me. the person playing chess is an individual. whether it's the best time for them to play or not should be up to _them_. Whether it's before their period or before lunch: a million things affect us, and we all have agency in deciding what we want to do, and when.

for the trainer to do this on another person's "behalf" is really distasteful and fails to be empathetic.

<comment><USER135> > Whether it's the best time for them to play or not should be up to them.

It is not that simple is sports. Sport is about pushing one to the limit and a bit beyond, by unquestionable trainer authority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER137> And... no one is surprised.

You can be "right" all you want, but then there is politics. It's been going on since at least the days of Socrates.

Every big org does plenty of silly stuff from perspective of rank and file. Sometimes it truly is silly, sometimes there are reasons that aren't obvious at that level.

I suppose Google made the rational decision. We'll have to see if it produces a martyr which is often the longer term outcome of these kind of situations. Doesn't seem like being a rallying point in the cultural war is a situation Google would want to be in at the moment, but who knows.

Thinking it may have been wiser to state publicly that every one is entitled to their opinion, but the official policy of the company was XYZ not open for debate. And then quietly send legal with a bag of cash and a stack of "zip your lip" forms and after the hoopla dies down a bit, an uneventful departure to "pursue other opportunities".

</comment><comment><USER138> I made the mistake of reading the "Manifesto" before being told what to think. Unfortunately I've made a decision that goes against the hivemind.

Seems I'm not alone at least, 4 scientists have written what I would call "agnostic" pieces on the subject which I mostly agree with[0].

The response (on twitter especially) has been nothing short of disgraceful, if ever we needed proof of an echo chamber and "sacred thoughts" it would only be a cross section of tweets on the subject.

It leaves one to wonder if these echo chambers are the cause of many of the worlds greater polarisations. (Trump vs Clinton was highly polarised -- Brexit -- Current situation in Sweden (rise of the right), Poland)

[0] [http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four- scientists-...](http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists- respond/)

</comment><comment><USER139> The author is right in that there is some evidence there are, on average, trait differences between biological sexes but it's dangerous to make the claim that some traits are better for certain types of work or that these differences can satisfactory explain a gender gap. Those conclusions aren't justified by his evidence.

Engineering can absolutely benefit from 'people' minded individuals as much as 'thing' minded. It's just it usually takes a few tours of 'thing' focused jr. engineering before you can get into the 'people' related challenges seen when doing large scale software engineering.

If you follow contemporary conservatives like Jordan Peterson you can find a lot of the same themes of social construction vs biology or 'institutional liberalism' he finds in academia.

</comment><comment><USER140> One thing I'd like to ask the women in this forum:

If you'd grown up back in the day before tech was cool and techies were (generally) just nerds with no money, would you have still been interested in tech?

My recollection from my teenage years in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s, emptying my Post Office savings account to buy one of the first batch of 10^5 BBC micros, trekking all over London searching for a Rubik's cube when they first arrived, and then later reading maths at Cambridge was that about 10% of the nerds were female.

The female nerds were just as good as the male nerds.

It's hard to say how much of that discrepancy was nature and how much was nurture.

If we want diversity of hiring across sexes for hard-core nerd jobs (as opposed to overall hiring at Google etc.) then we need to at least start early with the education of young girls.

<comment><USER141> Yes. My obsession with computers, which did not start until after I met some super geeks after college, has COST me tens of thousands of dollars, more if you count rent for my lab and patents.

It has cost me thousands of hours of time when I could've been reading literature, networking, cooking, going to med school, or a hundred other things.

It has been worth every fucking penny and minute and the best joy and highlights of my life have been when I learned about a new idea or created a new algorithm.

We exist. There just aren't that many of us and we don't glamour blog.

<comment><USER140> Thank you for reply.

>There just aren't that many of us

That was my point really - female geeks/nerds existed back in the day before tech was cool.

It's just the natural level of interest (NOT ability) seemed to be more like 10% rather than 50%.

<comment><USER141> It's hard to say. I'd say any natural interest I had in science was ignored or actively suppressed by my family. I think it's no accident that I did not embrace computers until after I was a financially independent adult.

If my family had encouraged me and others like me earlier, the numbers of us surely would've been larger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tom-_- Given the number of applications Google receives, I assume they receive far more candidates that "meet the bar" technically than they can ever possibly accept, as do top tier Universities with students who have stellar grades/test scores.

So like these Universities, Google must consider other factors they believe add uncommon value to the "campus" when choosing candidates, among which are ethnic and gender diversity. I believe the author is underestimating the value of this to Google's corporate culture and public image, and is probably overestimating the technical skill required to be a competent Googler.

That being said, I believe his firing will only raise the dissatisfaction of the (I'm sure many) employees that share his viewpoint or at least his right to express it.

</comment><comment><USER142> May be because I grew up in a third world country where we have to deal with real problems, like getting molested in public transport or gang raped while traveling back from work, I don't see the big deal here. Some guy who was full of himself and wrote a memo. Then he got canned from a business organization. End of story. Google is not here to settle political debates. Google is here to make money for it's share holders.

</comment><comment><USER143> And ironically, he proved exactly what was in the memo. Its is forbidden to even discuss diversity strategies at Google and it brands you bigot and racist.

</comment><comment><USER144> They were stuck between a rock and a hard place and chose what was less likely to effect ongoing litigation and what most people in Silicon Valley will accept. Other people were threatening to quit, they had no real choice here. This was the better of two bad decisions.

<comment><USER145> Could they not have done that before?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Well, I'm not the least bit surprised - you don't just get to spam your colleague network with your non-work-related hot-button-topic nondeliverable and get anything productive out of it.

If he's actually interested in the topic of working towards better workplace diversity, he could read a book, write some papers, put together a panel discussion, organize a conference, make an educational video...

</comment><comment><USER106> By doing this, Google is sending a strong signal that they will not tolerate a diversity of opinions.

That does not bode well for them, for a restrictive intellectual environment is anathema to the kind of intelligent people they want to hire to keep the company competitive.

</comment><comment><USER146> 1) why is it a moral imperative to have 50/50 gender balance in a company?

2) why is it wrong to have a non-diverse company?

<comment><USER147> Here's the minority's perspective: 1) Why is it required that there can be no more than 20% women in a tech company? 2) Why is it required to have a minimally diverse company?

If you look at these two questions and just say "hah! that's not the same thing at all!", then that's why.

<comment><USER146> Well, they're not the same thing, because nobody is claiming 20% women and minimal diversity is a moral imperative. There aren't executive-level staff in major corporations who are paid handsomely to ensure a 20% female staff. If you're arguing there is some kind of secret covenant amongst the shadowy bro- network for a fixed 20% women quota and minimal diversity, you'd need to provide some proof of that. Aside from that you haven't really addressed the questions I asked.

I've noticed a real inability (or perhaps disinclination) to speak about these issues in a straightforward way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER148> We have tens of thousands of highly specialised jobs in our modern societies. Maybe men perform better at some, women at others, and gender makes no difference in still others? If you reject even this question as offensive, how would you know if it's true?

It's like dismissing people saying the earth is round as being sacrilegious. If you don't even entertain the question, how would you know whether the earth is flat or round?

(I'm not talking about whether he should expressed this opinion at the office or outside, and whether Google should've fired him, but about political correctness in US society. Which seems out of control to me as an Indian.)

</comment><comment><USER149> Why do people/companies go to two extremes over this?

I can see what the Google engineer wanted to point out. He's simply saying that companies get aggressive in trying to improve diversity at the expense of merit.

Does that mean there are no competent employees of non-white-male backgrounds?

If Google really thought that they disagree with this employee, just prove it. Why such a furor?

</comment><comment><USER150> I grew up relatively poor; single disabled, unemployed parent. We couldn't afford a computer, because computers are (or were until very recently) expensive things. Programming too was, until very recently, not taught outside of university.

I had no help, I entered university a bit later than most as a mature student, so wasn't pushed towards it at a young age by any means, which is fairly typical for my social class, and yet affirmative action/positive discrimination affects me negatively, simply for being male.

I don't see how that's fair at all.

</comment><comment><USER151> "Mr. Damore, who worked on infrastructure for Google's search product, said he believed that the company's actions were illegal and that he would "likely be pursuing legal action."

"I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does," Mr. Damore said."

The guy apparently has decided to cleverly game the system and get $$$ settlement from Google.

<comment><USER152> Do we know where Martin Shkreli was during all this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER153> Has anyone encountered an unsolicited internal memo or manifesto at a company from an employee that didn't end this way? It's really not how you handle situations like this in a company setting regardless of intention.

</comment><comment><USER154> Two populations can have the same median and average score on fit for a criterion. However, if they have a different distribution, let's say population A has a 'normal' distribution while population B has a U-Shaped distribution, then after the application of a high pass filter with a cutout above the shared median, you will be left with proportionally higher residue of population B than of population A and unbiased sampling of the result will reflect this. Applying a high-pass filter below the median will show an inverse result. A high-pass filter with cut-off at the median will result in a 50/50 result between A and B remainders. As always, statistics do not say anything about any individual in any of the populations. Statistics does also not address the potential underlying causes of the distribution differences. Using statistical arguments to judge individuals is usually referred to as prejudice or discrimination. Many countries have adopted laws and regulations to curb some select forms of discrimination, while permitting others.

</comment><comment><USER155> Closing the thread to new accounts seems kind of sad, controversial topics like this lend themselves to throwaway accounts from active members of the community. Maybe the solution is some feature for anonymization from active accounts only, but it feels like we ought to find something better than forcing people to comment under an account that's generally linkable to a name.

<comment><USER91> Given the facts of this incident, the only reasonable explanation of banning throwaways on this discussion is to suppress those who are sympathetic to the fired point of view. Using your real name in this discussion, even with substantive comment (like the offending 3,300 word post), is a career limiting move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER156> Makes sense from corporate think. But I doubt it's the correct decision, this only furthers narrative that we can't talk openly.

</comment><comment><USER157> I'm not one to root for people to be fired for holding what I'd consider dumb or ill-informed opinions, but at the same time, as a woman, do I actually want to work on a team with someone who thinks I'm biologically unsuited to the job I'm doing and who is presumably judging my work more harshly and waiting for me to fail at things, who may have the power to review me poorly and affect my long-term career prospects? Gee, that's a tough one. If you've never had to work all day, every day at an office with people who treat you like that, or had to worry about being judged not on how hard you work but on who you are, be thankful. And that's obviously not a great look for a company that's already being investigated for discrimination, so I'm not sure they really had much of a choice here. Bringing bad PR to your company and potentially exposing them to legal liability usually doesn't end well.

<comment><USER57> Its a question what was worse for PR.

Firing him just proved his point. He said that google created environment, where people whos opinions are not completely aligned with left echo chamber dogma, cant express their views safely. ... And he was fired for exactly this.

Right leaning and centrist media is not on googles side here. And seems that he plans on suing:

> Damore plans to sue Google; he had previously complained to NLRB and wants > to argue that his dismissal was a revenge which would be illegal. See a > Damore's defiant answer to Reuters.

Mind you if you read actual manifesto with pictures and sources, you will see he was very careful with words. He carefully sourced all controversial points and mentioned multiple times that this are not his personal views. But pro feminist blogs and media misrepresented this memo, like PS SJW culture usually does. This was enough for vocal minority to pressure google HR to fire him, wihtout actually reading real memo and relying solely on biased interpretations.

On court he has the upper hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER158> In case it hasn't already been posted, this (apparently) is the original memo which includes sources and reads much differently.

[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles- Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER159> I feel Google cornered itself into this pickle. On the one hand they need to grow their pool of talent and make the non majority to feel comfortable --which makes those not in the majority feel they have more than average support from Management, who in turn turn a blind eye to anti-majority bashing.

On the other going above and beyond for underrepresented groups will eventually grate against the majority when they ham-fistedly overcorrect.

This engineer likely got a nice severance or will get his due in court. Seriously, you don't fire someone for having a non milquetoast opinion.

I mean, I expect this heavy handedness from a Walmart but not from a Google. There are other more finessed ways to get your corp culture disseminated.

Off topic, but not having a union allows Google to fire these offensive employees, unlike School districts who must retain people who grind their own little axes.

<comment><USER160> > On the one hand they need to grow their pool of talent and make the non > majority to feel comfortable

It isn't useful to make people comfortable in a way that is easily destabilized by other information (be it opinion or scientific research). It's actually terribly fragile and it does a real disservice to people.

<comment><USER159> True but they just can't impose received knowledge the way an authoritarian regime could.

There are advantages to having absolute power over people. But the disadvantages (corruption and despotism, for example) are too great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER161> It seems he's been fired for being wrong even as Google employees push all sorts of other harmful inaccurate stereotypes publically on social media. The hubris and oppression we feel underneath the unaccountable and inescapable reign of Google and Facebook grows more terrifying with every new revelation.

</comment><comment><USER162> What's crazy, if these roles were reversed... the ACLU would be all over it.

<comment><USER163> The ACLU claim to be non-partisan and crucially actually put their money where their mouth is. The ACLU has defended:

• The KKK ([https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-em-defends-kkks-right-free- sp...](https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-em-defends-kkks-right-free-speech))

• Neo-Nazis ([https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free- sp...](https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech- skokie)), something their history page refers to as "our finest hour"

• Milo Yiannopoulos ([http://www.npr.org/2017/02/12/514785623/the-aclu- explains-wh...](http://www.npr.org/2017/02/12/514785623/the-aclu-explains-why- theyre-supporting-the-rights-of-milo-yiannopoulos))

</comment></comment><comment><USER164> Suppose that you work for the company that consists of 80% vimers and 20% emacsers.

All documentation is geared towards vimers. There are interests groups geared towards vimers. No one questions you if you are a vimer. If you are a stuck with some error as an emacser there are fewer people to turn to or discuss your favorite text editor, so some people start to suggest that emacsers are worse programmers.

The company analyzes the research and decides that vim and emacs programmers are equal. If the company decides to invest into supporting emacsers, by requiring more documentation to be written in emacs and funding emacs meetups, it is not a discrimination against vimers. The company recognized that if it won't offset some benefits vimers have they would continue to lose out on a group of talented programmers.

<comment><USER65> I get what you're going for here but this isn't really a case where it makes sense to draw equivalence to text editors, tabs vs spaces, etc. This isn't a matter of taste or habit - it's a matter of discriminating against people based on the gender marker on their birth certificate or the color of their skin.

<comment><USER164> The discussion became so emotionally charged on either side so analogies are our best weapon right now.

<comment><USER65> I agree and that's why I didn't respond to this with a downvote - I just think you need to try to pick an analogy that isn't one of taste/choice and is instead one of some less controversial assigned trait. Not really sure what you'd pick, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER165> Really shameful, Google. You continue the trend of being a disappointment.

</comment><comment><USER166> Here's the document with the links: [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles- Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER167> If anything this #googlememo has proven, then that even if someone asks for an open debate and dares to ask the wrong questions, then he or she gets shut down to silence, shamed, defaced and hated. This is a dangerous development of our world right now. People who want to ask questions, think for themselves and challenge ideas, willing to admit mistakes and be open to thaught better in an open conversation will not stop to think this way when they get shut down and receive the aggression they currently get. This is causing a huge division in society and will lead to future violence if we do not stop this BS. The current extreme left is not only alienating the far right but everyone from centre left to right.

<comment><USER142> Oh please. Are far right and right organizations bastions of free speech ? How many churches and religious organizations are writing memos on gay rights or abortion rights ? Zero.

<comment><USER168> Free Speech is not identity politics. Free speech covers a gay person's right to speech & the right for abortion supporters to speak their mind.

Free speech also covers the speech of people on the political right (& left). Free speech is a fundamental American value.

Identity Politics are not about rights but about granting privilege to the "victim" groups & in it's extreme form, to justify oppressing the rights of people who don't buy into the dogma. Not the same thing. Free speech is about freedom. The Identity Politics that we see today is about Autocracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is the start of google become less technical and a less desirable place to work.

That might be okay for them. They had too many applications anyways

</comment><comment><USER169> I don't think this guy should've been terminated.

He wrote an inflammatory memo asserting that biological differences between men and women is a major factor in their performance at tech jobs. I don't believe the crux of his argument is scientific. He didn't provide much evidence but he did raise some valid points throughout his memo.

He just made a bunch of wrong assertions. The appropriate response should've been a statement saying the company does not agree with this one guy. Google should've ended it there but perhaps it became a PR headache.

This outrage on the net and people posting on Twitter that they declined job offers from Google is overmuch.

</comment><comment><USER170> This is why I'll never work for Google. Plain and simple.

<comment><USER171> Because they fire people who make stupid decisions?

<comment><USER170> The correct response is:

"As a company we do not agree with X's opinion on the assessment of the work environment or our diversity practices. Any further queries on the matter should be directed at X."

As other has mentioned, it's very likely X will take legal action against Google because what they've done is very reasonably arguably illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER172> Already mature discussion about the issue here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948857)

</comment><comment><USER173> Every time I read about women in tech discrimination problem I keep wondering: is it supposed to be specific to US or global?

Are there any countries that could serve as an counter-example? That is, has numerical parity between men and women in tech ever been achieved without implementing targeted diversity policies?

It would be great to have an example. "Look at country X! Their society doesn't discriminate based on gender, they are not promoting gender-specific roles, and as a result representation of women in tech / stem is equal to men".

<comment><USER174> >Are there any countries that could serve as an counter-example? That is, has numerical parity between men and women in tech ever been achieved without implementing targeted diversity policies?

As far as I know in poor unequal societies women go more to STEM careers[1]. I'd think that's because you don't have the luxury to choose to study something that won't pay well after your parents made the effort to put you through university.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/guardian- professional/2015/jun/2...](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian- professional/2015/jun/24/why-women-in-stem-may-be-better-off-working-in-india- and-latin-america)

<comment><USER125> And the opposite seems to also hold

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER175> I'm honestly curious...if diversity is such an important issue to so many people, why do large sports organizations such as the NFL, NBA, etc, still separate women into their own leagues and not allow them into the "men's league"? And probably in the range of billions of people support such organizations.

I personally feel are humans are equal regardless of race sex origin or any other factor. If you are a human, you have every right that any other human has and there is no place for discrimination of any kind.

<comment><USER176> How are you comparing diversity in the tech world with sports? It's not even apples and oranges, it's apples and asteroids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER177> There are a lot of reasons why Google isn't 50/50 Men and Women. And people try to justify it by saying "The company can't do anything about it." Many of the reasons sound well thought out. But these reasons also could have been used in the 70s when women weren't doctors, lawyers or accountants either. And (with the possible exception of at the partner level at the latter two) this has largely proven to be untrue. Nobody worries that their doctor, lawyer or accountant is female.

</comment><comment><USER178> If we're not considering qualifications of applicants vs ignorance of those qualifications by employers, then we're only fighting discrimination with discrimination. In none of the articles I've read have the reporters shown stats on applications weighing qualifications against hiring favoring race, sex, or religion. They simply state hired demographics and ignore factors that may have contributed to those demographics including education, opportunity, and typical interest by demographic.

</comment><comment><USER179> Humans give too much importance to 'fairness'. It seems to be a bias in our biology.[1]

Nearly, this entire thread can be summed up as: "It isn't fair that ..." Does anybody else find these discussions centred fairness and social rules to be tedious?

We should strive to get beyond fair, and beyond the conventional level of moral reasoning.

A diversity programme is not fair in the moment, but is designed to right historical wrongs. By definition it is probably sub optimal in serving this purpose. But hey, most human decisions are made based on subconscious impressions anyway, regardless of which corporate programme might be in place.

For those who don't like diversity programmes, let this fact comfort you. For those that do like them, see them as a statement of intent to be inclusive of others[2] but take them with a grain of salt.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task) Where a difficult puzzle becomes easier to solve when framed in the context of policing a social rule.

2\. In addition to being obsessed with petty social rules and who broke them, humans are also inherently tribal, and almost unconsciously split into in- groups and out-groups. I find it impossible to believe that this kind of outgurouping might not be happening during hiring decisions.

</comment><comment><USER180> The idea that someone who brought so much bad publicity to their employer and to themselves, regardless of how, could ever stay employed by that company is completely ridiculous.

<comment><USER181> He posted his thoughts on _internal_ forum. _If_ there is anyone who should be fired, it is the person that leaked it outside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER182> just reading quickly through the document (memo? manifesto? commentary?), it's obviously highly political, both in positional language and ideological couching. the author may believe he is being completely logical in his thinking, but it's full of post-hoc rationalization. * disappointed *

should the guy have been fired? probably. it's political and divisive and disrupts the workplace. but he'll bounce back. it's not like he was black and selling crack on the corner.

are the ideas worth debating? yes, at least some of them. just not in a public document directed at your employer ...in a righteous, sometimes condescending tone. that's just dumb, or more charitably, a rookie mistake. you just gotta know that kind of stuff can get you fired, even if you see yourself as the hero (spoiler: ned stark, season 1).

i'm a little disappointed at the amount of panning required to find the interesting nuggets of discussion buried in this otherwise huge dung heap of political posturing (on both sides) in these comments. is it nature or nuture? my gosh, it just might be both!

what's fascinating to me is the document's lens onto a parallel rationalization and political decision calculus that leads us to a president trump. it's not the totality of it by any stretch of the imagination, but it smells of that sense of loss and frustration by the perennial political winners who (real or imagined) see their grip on the political narrative weakening. how will it turn out? stay tuned for next week's episode, when we find out who jon's parents are!

* eyebrow arched over beer mug held with an erect pinky finger _

<comment><USER57> I think he knew very well what he was doing.

>As a child, Damore was a chess champion, earning the FIDE Master title, putting him in the >99th percentile, according to his CV.

and

> Damore plans to sue Google; he had previously complained to NLRB and wants > to argue that his dismissal was a revenge which would be illegal. See a > Damore's defiant answer to Reuters.

Should explain it well. He knew very well what result will be, thats why he put his name on memo. He knew that SJWs at google will pressure HR to fire him. Apparently he prepared the ground with NLRB complains. And if you have read full non redacted memo with sources and pictures you can see he was very careful with wording and he pointed out that controversial things are not his opinions but he provided other sources for them. There is nothing Google can use on real court (they have enough to convict him according to SJW norms in echo chamber court though) to prove that he was misogynistic.

Also he is getting a lot of support from right leaning and centrist media. I would say that way more people support him than support Google firing him.

Timing is also in his advantage. Recently google disabled youtube and gmail account of Jordan Peterson, youtube announced thy plan to isolate videos with controversial views despite not braking ToS, and accusation that google manipulates search results to favor left talking points are around for long time. There are a lot of articles, blogs and videos about those topics currently and this is quite effective smearing campaign against google that pushes users to think about alternatives to google products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER183> I'm interested in reading objective, reasonable, preferably peer reviewed papers supporting either side of this argument. If you have any links, please post them.

</comment><comment><USER184> I actually think that there is a real problem forming in society where certain views and ideas are sacred cows and _any_ mention of an idea that runs counter to those ideas in any way results in the person being personally attacked and shamed. This doesn't raise the level of discourse or make people more sensitive or agreeing with the sacred cows, it just makes them hold their views in private and then express them when they vote and don't have to explain themselves.

I also believe that Google has every right to fire this employee based on the memo. A company is a place you work. They pay you a salary in exchange for your time. It is not a democracy. You don't pay taxes to them for fair representation. You have no expectation of free speech when it comes to work. Clearly Google is trying to build an environment with certain values. If somebody is working there who is promoting an opposing set of values, it makes complete sense that they would remove that person. The person then has the freedom to go work for a company that they feel is promoting their values if they feel that that is something that is important for the company they work for to do.

</comment><comment><USER185> I honestly can't understand most of the discussion. For me, the crucial point is only one:

What is the objective?

What are you aiming for? Google, governments, NGOs, eccetera have their own objectives.

What's Google purpose? Make money, lots of it, as simple as that.

Well, what do you have to do then? Really simple: optimise for profit! In regard to hiring, A/B test the mix of people that work best. Is a group of only minorities the best one? Hooray, hire only minorities and, when you can legally fire the "white males" just trash them as soon as possible. Have you found that there's a secret mixture of "white males", "black males", "white females", "esquimeses" that perform superbly? Well, keep on hiring them!

Are you the US government and need to optimise for general wealth? Perfect, then you should hire that woman, who needs to support her 4 children, and forget about that 19 year old Stanford PhD, he will make tons of money somewhere else.

Are you Google and need the general consensus of a particular group of people? Well, then just behave accordingly.

I laugh when I see "biological differences", not because it is untrue, but because it misses the real point.

What is the objective?

</comment><comment><USER186> Note that the first function of a political system, democratic or not, is what Jurgen Habermas calls "The Suppression of Generalizable Interests". An alternative take on it is at

[http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf](http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf)

What it comes down to is putting certain things on the agenda and removing other things.

Despite overflowing coffers, for instance, Google has been effectively silent about the problem of underinvestment in internet access. Every so often we get some "Willy Wonka" idea like Google Fiber or Loon, but it never amounts to anything -- in the case of Loon, Google destroyed a business that was already using the technology to deploy internet to people... for nothing.

When we look at what really matters to Google, note how quickly they mobilized when Trump tried his stupid "muslim ban". It is an ugly truth, but the overwhelming majority of immigrants who are coming to Google and similar companies are male. If anything were to move the needle on gender balance it would be gender balance for immigrant engineers, but you know that is off the table.

Or look at the housing and homelessness mess in the Bay Area. Google and Silicon Valley runs roughshod over 99% of the Earth, but in their local area they can't solve problems at all.

If we did not have a "winner take all society", it would not be such a big deal about who gets the opportunities at Google. Somebody else would be hiring all of the great engineers that Google overlooks. As it is, Google is hiring engineers just to keep them away from competitors such as Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER187> I disapprove of what you say,but i defend to the death your right to say it.Do you still remember 'Don't be evil'?SHAME ON YOU,GOOGLE.

</comment><comment><USER105> I thought many here were contrarians - and the positive side of a contrarian is that they can see both sides of the issue and the negative side is that they tend to be prone to trolling.

It appears there is a lack of seeing both sides on this issue - which, to me, means there is something else going on.

It's a kind of philosophy. It's more than politics. I think it may be about what Truth actually is.

For example (and I'm feeling my way here, forgive me my more philosophically minded friends) that what we are people are clashing about is what is true, useful and socially agreed upon to believe in. It's like the social contract - if we somehow all accepted that behaving in society was untrue and so stopped operating in society, it would collapse. So there is an accepted truth that living in a society is a useful and helpful thing.

The same with sexual stereotypes. There may be some data here on both sides (The Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Surgery ones come to mind), but it's neither useful nor helpful to society, and so if someone says X is untrue then society will emphatically say it is true. You, a human living in society, will defend where and who you live with.

Politics is somewhat about the organisation of society. What most people on both sides of this debate cannot see is that they are arguing about something more fundamental.

Now - with a cheery hello to my future employers who will hopefully (I'm a data scientist) be using some advanced data software to tie up my contrarian HN posts with my actual identity, I'm not at all surprised the employee was fired. It goes against the culture that he is in. I do believe the discussion should be had, and repeated, debunked and defended like you imagine a real debate to work like.

</comment><comment><USER188> This essay, from a former Google employee, touches on the themes that go to the heart of why supporters of this guy are flat-out wrong in their take on the situation. Tolerance is not a moral precept: [https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral- precept-1...](https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral- precept-1af7007d6376)

</comment><comment><USER189> This is one of the big reasons why I don't work for a large corporation, your value to them is really limited, so they can fire you for any reason they want.

The guys memo may have been wrong on some things, but I don't know why you should fire a guy for bringing up something.

This is mainly about virtue signaling. Google wants to let the world know that it isn't sexist, so it gets this guy to be the scapegoat.

</comment><comment><USER190> We haven't seen anything yet. What we're witnessing is the transition from capitalism to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and things like this termination are an obvious milestone. That may sound like a bold claim but let me explain.

Allow me to back up a little bit. First off some context: a lot of people don't realize it but we are a lot closer to a post-scarcity world than the world would have you think. Check out this chart which shows GDP per capita since the 1950's. The productivity gains since the 1950's have been absolutely incredible, and the quality of life back then was pretty good. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA)

Have you ever noticed there's never any dialogue about encouraging men to be stay at home dads, or reducing the overall household number of hours worked per week? Never. The dialogue is always about the "wage gap" and "women have value too" and "rape culture" and "microaggressions". Men who are stay at home dads still get shamed just as much as they did during the 1950's. This is how you know there's something wrong - there is never any serious dialogue about actual equality. Income has in no way, shape, or form, kept up the with the GDP per capita shown in the chart above. There's never any explorations of policies that would actually increase equality, like restricting the number of "investment properties" a man or woman can own, behavior which is clearly parasitic. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_productivity_and_...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg) It's not in corporate interests to have people have actual equality. Increasing the labor pool without discussions of actual equality makes it so that people can be kept in debt, wages go down and the nexus of power moves away from the family and towards the corporation, which is what is happening.

"Women have value and should be working full time too". The implication here is that if you are not working for money you have no value. Despite common belief, in fact it IS possible to generate value outside of a money context. Many of the world's greatest achievements have occurred outside a money context, eg. the discovery of calculus, wikipedia, linux, countless famous works of art, literature, and philosophy. By saying that you only have value if you earn money is throwing many of the world's most accomplished people under a bus. The reason why "money is the only form of value" is such a horrible mentality is that it leads to people like Mozart dying in poverty and being thrown into a ditch, which actually happened.

Check out charts of combined household numbers of hours worked, you'll see it's going way UP not down, despite the GDP per capita chart shown above. There is clearly something dark in that picture. [http://www.bls.gov/opub/working/chart17.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/opub/working/chart17.pdf) I don't think these are idle complaints - feminism in its current form is an ideology that's on a direct collision course with the whole 'robots are about to take all the jobs' reality, which I think is going to come a lot sooner than we realize, and when these two phenoma collide, what's going to happen is that it's not going to be equality (sorry folks) it's going to be Brave New World, an immensely stratified society.

I work in one of Alphabet's departments where everything you do is constantly monitored. Your teammates conduct detailed psychometric analyses of you, beyond the simple perf of yesteryear. It's beyond cult-like. It's Brave New World.

<comment><USER73> side note: I recommend that anybody who's headed for Burning Man read Brave New World before you go.

poly + molly + endless disposable entertainment ... it's hard to come to grips with, and incredibly scary.

<comment><USER191> Oh, that isn't scary yet.

My most troubling experience regarding Brave New World concerns a short community review of Brave New World on GoodReads I read not long time ago. (The only review in Finnish.) It consistently kept calling it "utopia" and discussed only things like how the savages lived in terrible conditions and the characters and "Shakespeare quotes" were "annoying". _Not a word about how book is meant to be a dystopia, or if skipping the fancy words, about a society that is a pretty bad place to live._ And I was left wondering if the writer of that review just did not know about the word "dystopia", or simply could not spot anything troubling with the picture Huxley painted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER192> I think this person might have grounds to sue Google for financial compensation. I don't think what Google did was legal. A good lawyer could probably sue millions from them.

But I understand why they had to fire him for PR reasons. It would be untenable to keep him. They will probably just write off any compensation they will have to pay him as the result of upcoming lawsuit.

</comment><comment><USER193> What did he want to happen?

What did he think would happen?

Bonus: Why didn't he just post this to Reddit?

</comment><comment><USER194> I strongly feel this was a PR move by Google. I read the article and although I disagree with many of the points stated, firing the person was an extreme step. It would set a wrong precedent for anyone trying to speak up against the majority. A behind the door warning and a rap on wrist would have been enough.

</comment><comment><USER195> People keep saying "the workplace isn't a place for politics" as if the reason minorities have been kept out of tech in the first place hasn't been because of politics. Not being allowed to vote is politics. Not being allowed education is politics. You cannot separate the two.

</comment><comment><USER196> I for one am glad that corporations are the ultimate arbitrator of what is acceptable political discourse. -s

</comment><comment><USER197> I read the whole thing out of curiosity since I'm often a target for witch- hunts myself after expressing unrelated unpopular views. I can't really see any reasons for being fired in the memo, except for the shame-and-punish- culture around these issues that he mentions. Not that I agree with everything, empathy is essential and a big part of adjusting towards a more humane and feminine world. But then he gets that part spot on, that becoming more feminine as a whole is a superior strategy to fitting more women inside a masculine framework by discrimination. The society we build has to provide space for all of us as individuals, not by making us all the same. You can't fix inequality by discrimination, why is this so difficult to understand?

</comment><comment><USER198> Could someone please explain to me why this man didn't publish the article anonymously? Critics point to undeniable workplace disruption that it's caused. This isn't a free-speech issue. It's a public challenge to management. And that's generally a bad move.

</comment><comment><USER199> So, stating true, scientifically verified facts that challenge Google's official political ideology is now a fireable offence.

This is insane. The speed at which this ideology has taken over SV is breathtaking, and a massive disincentive for anyone not already so inclined to work there.

<comment><USER43> Oh no, no, not at all.

These are not scientifically verifiable facts. Actually, I take that back. His broad claims can be scientifically demonstrated as false.

I encourage you to pause and read this:

[https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

If that doesn't explain things, then I don't know what will. I hope it provides better context - whether we agree or not.

<comment><USER200> The link doesn't explain a thing about the science; in fact, the author states in the very first paragraph that he won't even bother. What exactly do you think you posted?

The manifesto's claims are very much in the scientific mainstream. Evidence has only piled on since the Pinker-Spelke debate. You have very little to hang your hat on in this argument.

[1] [https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.htm...](https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html)

<comment><USER43> Try this then:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evzjww/here- are-t...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evzjww/here-are-the- citations-for-the-anti-diversity-manifesto-circulating-at-google)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER201> I never understood why diversity should play a role in the hiring process. If I have a company and I want to hire somebody, the only thing I care about is whether this person offers a valuable contribution to my business or not. It's plain simple to me and I fail to see how superficial attributes such as gender or race are a part of this "equation".

With that being said, it is totally understandable why Google fired the employee, regardless of whether his voiced opinions were out of line or not. The manifesto was not well perceived by the media and not firing the employee would have resulted in bad PR. By firing the employee Google made a very rational decision.

</comment><comment><USER202> James Damore, has Bachelor of Science in Biology, Physics and Chemistry + PHD in Systems Biology from Harvard; even though his total experience in writing code is approximately 4 years.

I think google will reconsider their hiring preferences after this.

</comment><comment><USER203> Surprised to see no mention of John Haidt and the "illiberal left" thus far.

<comment><USER4> Tell me more about this? I've had Haidt recommended to me (to read) multiple times, and I've been reluctant so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER204> Off topic, but it seems like the ranking algorithm needs some tweaking. Should this article posted 12 hours ago really be on the 15th page of HN (rank 381) when most of the front page articles submission timestamps are older?

</comment><comment><USER205> the author of the memo is completely correct and, as others have said, his memo is drastically misrepresented in the coverage it has received. he simply points out that women _could_ have less desire to go into fields such as cs because of their biological makeup. he never says that women should leave google -- he only says that trying to reach a perfectly equal distribution is misguided. perhaps those who are red in the face while reading the memo failed to read between the lines and realize that under this logic, the women who do find themselves wanting to go into cs for passion and not just money should be welcomed. he never once called for anything other than the policy of acceptance and wide open doors that is currently in place. he is merely suggesting that maybe a perfect 50/50 distribution is not needed and, more importantly, liberal people in general need to snap out of the double think where we believe men and women are the same. men and women are not the same.

as a liberal i find that it is important to not shy away from controversy: women and men are biologically different. i am sorry, but they are. you dont need to reject this fact in order to treat women with respect and equality.

<comment><USER4> This is another maddening component - who actually argues that men and women are the same? Everyone courageously disagrees with this, but I seriously cannot find anyone actually advancing that viewpoint. It's this weird blind spot. I tried asking a few times in another thread, and the only replies I got were from people trying to debunk it.

Of _course_ men and women are different, duh. The problem isn't that premise. The problem is the arguments people make _from_ it.

You get the feeling that there are these legions of people that assume that liberals are in favor of diversity programs because liberals believe men and women are the same. And then these legions of people point to a study that shows men and women aren't the same, and then they feel, "A-ha! Take _that_ , liberals!" It's completely mystifying to me.

We're not in favor of diversity programs because of a belief that men and women are the same. We're in favor of diversity programs because we know that people will use these differences as excuses to discriminate against women. This is not hard to understand!

<comment><USER38> There absolutely are people who are against any claims that men and women are biologically different, the president of Harvard got fired for even hinting that this was a possibility. Another way to look at it, if there are differences between men and women than you would expect men to be better at some things and women to be better at some things. Try claiming one of the sexes is better at anything and see how that goes over.

<comment><USER4> Larry Summers didn't merely say they were different, he used that to argue that it helped explain what others attribute to discrimination - that's different. (And from doing some googling, it's also apparently not why he was fired, even though it did cause controversy.) My point is that merely pointing out that men and women are different doesn't weaken any of the arguments that people tend to use to justify diversity programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER206> I am somewhat surprised that others are upset he was fired. Free speech doesn't always apply within a company context and speaking politically on either side is a bad idea. Not to mention, while he may have some points, he's approaching a people problem as a statistics problems. With deep rooted issues like this (that have lasted for 100s of years) you can't just pull out data that won't apply going forward if we actually try to make things better...

<comment><USER207> > speaking politically on either side is a bad idea.

Part of the current concern is that it has become common to speak on just one side in tech culture. It is seen in some circles as morally superior to be on the side of social justice no matter what the context is (or what other justices are at play).

</comment></comment><comment><USER208> This individual apparently has a biology PhD from Harvard, but only two published papers. How common is this in biology? Seems very low compared to computer science.

</comment><comment><USER195> I've seen a lot of this argument going back and forth on the concept of "how it would feel to be a diversity hire" or "if more qualified candidates aren't getting the job". This ENTIRE line of thinking misses the point of diversity programs. The purpose is long-term--to make it so that at some point in the future you don't NEED a diversity program anymore. And that's why they are critical.

<comment><USER209> What is the "target" amount of diversity? What is it for coal mines? Given all the diversity & inclusion roles, are you really suggesting these initiatives are intended to go away at some point in the future?

</comment></comment><comment><USER210> In highschool, I always got to hear that I'm a "loser computer nerd" while the cool girls wanted to do media, social and similar stuff. I studied CS (95% male students). How can anyone be surprised by men being the majority. In schools there are like 75% female teachers (I'm in Germany). Should male rebel?

You have to do diversity actions before age 10 if you want to do it right.

(Yes, this is anecdotal, yet fairly typical, I guess)

</comment><comment><USER211> Thank you internets and HN for participating in our extensive experiment.

In this experiment, we monitored how we could manipulate opinions and elicit reactions by posting content on different mediums.

Unfortunately, due to the classified nature of this study, we can't really reveal more to you right now.

Also, we made a fuck tonne of money! You helped fund the whole thing, and then some!

No, you can't have the data. Really now, I'm surprised you even asked.

\- The Man in the Shadows

</comment><comment><USER212> In case anyone cared, here's a fundraiser link for the fired employee:

[https://www.wesearchr.com/bounties/james-damore-official- fun...](https://www.wesearchr.com/bounties/james-damore-official-fundraiser)

HN Submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14954463#](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14954463#)

<comment><USER213> Haha wow. Of course the fundraiser for this piece of work is hosted on the alt-right's de-facto crowdfunding site. In case you had any doubt, please note that one of the most successful campaigns on WeSearchr is raising money to help a Neo-Nazi blog in a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center.

[https://www.wesearchr.com/bounties/daily-stormer-vs-splc- leg...](https://www.wesearchr.com/bounties/daily-stormer-vs-splc-legal- defense-fund)

</comment></comment><comment><USER214> I don't get this bit from the linked article:<blockquote>"Google has denied the charges, arguing that it doesn't have a gender gap in pay, but has declined to share full salary information with the government."</blockquote>Doesn't the government have that data already? The IRS is part of "the government", isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER215> For all the people who think the memo actually had a point, this is a huge opportunity. You can now get a court case going and get a judge to rule on it.

It would, of course, be a good idea to do some background research into biology, sociology, cross-industry comparators and the history of software development. And drum up some expert witnesses. I'm sure you'll be fine.

</comment><comment><USER216> Affirmative action in south Africa was a laughing stock. The country is in terminal decline riddled with corrupt people who have no business being in their positions. No appreciation of their positions and what ordinarily would be required to achieve the position. I will bet against any institution which implements affirmative action as a solution.

</comment><comment><USER217> I'm not clear on the context it was delivered in, but that memo was pretty focused on measurable phenomena and fairness to individuals even when making generalizations. If that's what it takes to get fired from Google, there's clearly no room for discussion on this matter.

</comment><comment><USER218> Your gender and skin color effect your chance of being hired at Google, and that is racist and sexist.

<comment><USER219> > effect your chance of being hired

affect* is a verb, effect is a noun

</comment></comment><comment><USER220> Don't confuse the employee handbook and share holder value for the US constitution. Google is entitled to have some values that they believe in.

Imagine if an employee at a catholic owned business started an internal conversation on the benefits of abortions.

</comment><comment><USER221> honestly I haven't read the original post/email/letter. I'm sure most of the keyboard warriors you see on here as well as Blind or any other forums haven't read the whole thing either.

I have a feeling that people jumped into conclusions before reading it or understanding author's POV. I'm frankly surprised by Google's reaction. They should have debated this internally instead of firing an employee because h/she expressed their opinion. Even if the author was wrong, they could've countered his/her points by bringing proofs/scientific studies.

</comment><comment><USER222> > Ellen Pao's gender-discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & > Byers in 2015 also brought the issue to light

Oh yeah, when does that go to verdict? Guessing it's still pending as this is all the article had.

</comment><comment><USER223> Relevant: Stossel's Racist Bake Sale

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDVnzQD_FVU&t=88s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDVnzQD_FVU&t=88s)

</comment><comment><USER224> There is no reason for an employee to be concerned about who their employer hires as long as said companies are operating within the framework of law. This is none of your business literally.

Google is currently under investigation for pay disparity and are obliged to review everything and ensure there is no sexism at play. If you don't like this surely you should challenge the laws that demand this of Google.

Sending a memo on diversity or any political issue is an aggressive political action in the workplace that can only have one outcome. The context for debates and action about merit and diversity is in the legal democratic space not the office.

This individual is not a victim of free speech but of indiscretion.

</comment><comment><USER44> We don't need diversity program, we need tolerance programs so everybody can see the value of an individual regardless their gender,race or whatever thing irrelevant for the job

<comment><USER147> "diversity" and "inclusion" often go hand in hand. Throw in some "unconscious bias" training, and you begin marching down a path. I think it's something only time and a diverse gene pool will heal. Relevance to the job is a key thing, as simple as it sounds. You always want "the best", and in tech, that often means "people like me", which necessarily means "not people like them", and we find ourselves where we are today.

It's a journey.

<comment><USER44> I think this is like medicine, you can cure the illness or treat the symptoms. Diversity programs treat the symptoms, tolerance programs might solve the problem. I don't see how hiring women and putting in a toxic corporate culture will help. It will mostly scare the women and potentially new hires. We need different things, and firing a person who raises this topic is not helping.

I don't think the big companies got big hiring similar people as the founders. But getting diverse roles. Although once they got big,the middle management night so what you say.

<comment><USER225> The combination is like something else: preventative medicine. You know the problem exists, so you're pro-active in doing something about the condition before it gets out of hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> Does anyone know why isn't this story higher in the news feed? For the past two hours it has had over 500 upvotes and over 600 comments and it's still at position nine.

<comment><USER226> I think HN automatically denotes stories where there are more comments than votes. It might also be manually demoted further by the mods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER227> a few scientists chime in:

[https://archive.is/z6xxP#selection-391.260-391.683](https://archive.is/z6xxP#selection-391.260-391.683)

I for one take their words over Yonatan Zunger in this - as this is after all, their field of expertise. Zunger may be great in many things, but behavioural science, evolutionary psychology and psychology in general are i'm fairly certain not fields where he holds any achievements.

</comment><comment><USER228> We should be able to apply security technologies to online discourse. Theoretically it should be possible to separate real identity from virtual identity: maybe I publish a bunch of stuff in such a way that no one can ever figure out _who_ I am but anyone _can_ verify that a series of different comments/articles/etc. were all made by the same person. Then you could decide to follow people who publish things that interest you without having any feasible way to identify them (you can't fire them, you can't meet them, etc.).

<comment><USER229> This is easy to do: add a cryptographic signature to your blog posts (you can use a self-signed cert; the signature just proves that the person who signed various documents had control of the private key in a particular key pair). I think the only obstacle is convincing readers that there's some value in having that digital signature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I just feel bad for Googlers who have to deal with this internally and externally. Sorry guys keep up the great work in whatever it is you do there.

</comment><comment><USER230> Would a "vice president for diversity, integrity and governance" be indicating Google considers itself lacking some of these?

</comment><comment><USER113> Does anyone know first hand if any employees agreed with the sentiment in this memo? Shouldn't they be let go as well?

<comment><USER65> Holding an opinion isn't a firing offense. The firing offense is violating the agreements he signed as an employee (the most obvious poor decision here being the choice to post his manifesto on corporate services using corporate equipment).

<comment><USER231> >the most obvious poor decision here being the choice to post his manifesto on corporate services using corporate equipment

Why is this a violation? Not trying to be argumentative, actually just curious. Seems like putting personal thoughts on company Google Docs would be a questionable decision for privacy concerns, but not a violation.

<comment><USER65> In this context, the fact that the manifesto _also_ violates the code of conduct makes it more likely that they feel obligated to act. If it were in a private chat or on his personal blog it would be much less of a big deal. Similarly, people posted stuff like that in g+ and memegen comments frequently without getting fired. I think the scale and visibility is part of why he got a bigger response in general. Sending around a less controversial manifesto inside the company probably would've been fine - I think he could have easily just focused on the diversity programs and elaborated why he thinks they aren't working well, and that wouldn't have gotten him fired or caused such a controversy.

For whatever reason, he decided to go in deep and lay out his entire worldview on biology and gender traits, ensuring as much disagreement and conflict as possible. Whether this means he intended to cause problems or he just didn't understand how to complain constructively is a big question...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER232> I am starting to think that this type of debate will only work constructively once we have Elon Musk's brain computer and are able to express our complete world of thoughts to each other. Using words is so unbelievably flawed, as it is impossible for anyone to communicate in full what they actually want to say, without being perceived as saying something else as well.

Is it possible that humans have reached their limits of current collective intellectual capacity?

</comment><comment><USER233> Just another example of "my systemic advantage is natural, and any attempt to correct for that is an injustice."

</comment><comment><USER234> Does this post have more comments than any other in Hacker News history? Is there a way to sort threads by most comments?

</comment><comment><USER235> He should have made a movie: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask)

The outcome was: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1vuho8/the_docu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1vuho8/the_documentary_that_made_scandinavians_cut_all/)

</comment><comment><USER236> I have a couple of thoughts about this but this topic is so toxic that it prevents a healthy discussion about it.

</comment><comment><USER237> This seems to be what y'all fighting for - a chance to rise through the ranks by being a SJW (via Monday's SF chronicle): [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/slack-senior-engineer-erica- ba...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/slack-senior-engineer-erica-baker- stewart-butterfield-diversity-in-tech-silicon-valley-154010403.html)

</comment><comment><USER238> This man dared to challenge 50+ years of post-modern indoctrination. The result is hardly surprising. I salute his bravery though. Look forward to his discussion with Jordan Peterson. [https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/89490930975844352...](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/894909309758443520)

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I'm not sure how I feel about this since I have my own beliefs which make me a big outsider in terms of politics (being a Mutualist anarchist isn't fun when you try to explain it to coworkers). But my view is that it's best to never discuss politics or religion (and sometimes sports this one depends) at the job since it can rub people the wrong way. It's not fun working where you've either ticked someone off or you've been ticked off by someone else. Some polite distancing of one's beliefs from their work life I feel is more important than trying to offer any advice to HR, even if it has some merit. It's just asking for a pink slip and a black mark on your resume.

But the biggest confusion I think is how conservatives react to this situation for me. I use to be an avid fan of Buckley and use to read the National Review regularly as a teenager (yes I'm weird). So when I see conservatives lash out at Google over their right to fire anyone at will or on the basis that the employee is disrupting the environment at work (be it rightful or not from the point of view of fairness) I see hypocrisy of the most base kind. Conservatism in the United States values the freedom of companies, employees, and private citizens to associate and disassociate on their own. If Google wants to hire Mutualists like myself and not hire a GOP or Democrat then they should be on the principles of American Conservatism have their choice respected and not challenged in court or in some dishonest manner which violates the property rights of others. To attempt to walk back or moderate the position of free association on the basis that might hurt some people who share conservative values is to undermine the very basis of conservatism in my opinion. Basically, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either all businesses and private citizens have the freedom of association (and disassociation) or they do not have that right. It stinks but consistency in political ideologies is an important metric to understanding whether or not an ideology can sustain itself. If American Conservatism cannot sustain itself under such consistency then the ideology is flawed and should be reformed such that it can give a conditional freedom of association on a consistent basis both in political theory and in terms of law (i.e. accepting that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent additions to the law are warranted and consistent with said ideological grounds). Mind you, I'm not a conservative at all but I'm speaking from my beliefs that I held many years ago and how I interpreted American Conservatism. But I recall Buckley holding a similar view as the one I described. And it would take a mighty strong argument for me to be convinced that the contrary is consistent with American Conservatism and conservatism as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER239> @QUFB just hit pay dirt with this post. It's great to see so much participation.

</comment><comment><USER240> So, Google's snowflakes are trying to place some naive pseudo-scientific and pseudo-philosophical but popular among other snowflakes compilation of current memes and fancy terminology upon objective reality by silencing a naive but not clueless attempt to remind others about some old truths..

Let's put it straight. There _are_ obvious, hardwired evolutionary specialization among sexes of all species. Sexes are evolutionary innovation to achieve better survival rates (achieved by the process of evolurionary trial and error and natural selection) not some stupid religious nonsense. So, there is no equality in principle, by definition, by design. The notion of equal _rights_ is completely different story, it is social realm - few levels up from underlying biology.

There is not a single doubt that biology dominates and partially determines psychology (the nature part of the Nature and Nurture whole). Biology also dominates sociology - most of human traditions and social norms are deeply grounded in biological differences and specialization - there is nothing to talk about. Animal behavioral patterns, which could be called "traditions of species" are, obviously, determined by biology and environmental factors.

At least few stereotypes produced by various human cultures (products of social formations, partially determined by biology) are reflections to various extend of these real, existing, "material" fundamental differences captured in traditions. Dismissal of all the stereotypes as a category is plain stupidity.

Hipsters and snowflakes who are trying to gain attention by "challenging" objective reality with their naive memes (the ridiculous attempts to redefine what sexes are and what it is for with "third sex" nonsense is an obvious example) at very least raise some brows.

Notice that I am not in the least "conservative", I am principal and scientific. There are evolutional and biological reasons _why_ this or that aspect of sex differences emerged and what is for. Whatever is valid for all species applies to humans too, no matter what liberal arts graduates would say about man's superiority.

Nature forms and dominates, Nurture varies and adapts. There is not a single doubt that equal _rights_ must be given to both sexes (there are only two of them) and equal rights must be protected.

This is where the notion of equality ends. Equality of sexes is a hipster's utter nonsense, not because conservatives think so, or some popular religious text says so, but for straightforward scientific reasons, anatomical and neurobiological. This is so-called objective reality, and opinions and memes of current snowflakes are simply non-applicable.

<comment><USER241> > There is not a single doubt that biology dominates and partially determines > psychology

If it "dominates" it's inherent it (at least) "partially determines", reducing your assertion to "There is not a single doubt biology dominates psychology," which is basically untenable, scientifically.

> I am principal and scientific.

No. No you're not, unless you actually are a principal, but then it has no bearing the matter at hand. You approach is also not very scientific.

> There are evolutional and biological reasons why this or that aspect of sex > differences emerged and what is for. Whatever is valid for all species > applies to humans too, no matter what liberal arts graduates would say about > man's superiority.

Let's cut your unsound and poorly constructed argument short here: I cede this proposition. That means, for the sake of argument, I will assume it as completely sound and correct.

Now,

explain to me, in detail, how this (now assumed true) inequality of the sexes leads to one of them being unable to code (or assume various complex technical tasks) as well as the other, purely from biological differences.

I'll save you the trouble. You can't, because if you could, you wouldn't be wildly speculating about it online. You'd be writing scientific papers about it.

Your larger argument boils down to:

-men and women are biologically different,

-there are difference between men and women

-therefore these difference must be biological

It's a fallacy. Scientifically rigorous arguments are not build around fallacies.

P.S. principled and scientific minds usually shy away from using laden and denigrating terms in their arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER242> Slate star codex on the science behind gender representation: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagge...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/)

Makes the very clever comparison to medicine and other fields that used to be 100% male.

"Nobody has any real policy disagreements. Everyone can just agree that men and women are equal, that they both have the same rights, that nobody should face harassment or discrimination. We can relax the Permanent State Of Emergency around too few women in tech, and admit that women have the right to go into whatever field they want, and that if they want to go off and be 80% of veterinarians and 74% of forensic scientists, those careers seem good too. We can appreciate the contributions of existing women in tech, make sure the door is open for any new ones who want to join, and start treating each other as human beings again."

</comment><comment><USER243> Funny fact.

I'm at #SHA2017 hacker camp and just before the event I put together a website: [https://hck2fck.com](https://hck2fck.com)

(didn't read Google story, just saying political correctness works - I talk to attractive women everywhere but workplace)

</comment><comment><USER244> We fire people for snickering at the word "Dongle".

We witch hunt people who play at Gor in their spare time.

We hound CEOs who disagree with the popular stance on gay marriage.

We fire people who clumsily try to open a dialogue internally to a company.

The tech industry is indeed fucked, but perhaps not for the reasons that are currently popular.

<comment><USER245> > We witch hunt people who play at Gor in their spare time.

Fuck that noise. Larry Garfield was asked to step down because his Gorean activities leaked into Drupal events and that made others feel unwelcome.

<comment><USER244> I'm sorry, but citation needed. His activities were brought to light by others, and he was hounded for that. There was no report of his outside interests impacting anyone.

<comment><USER245> Argh! Yes, the communication was incredibly bad because Dries was afraid if he spills the entire thing as is then the woman in question would be blamed for him forcing Garfield to step down. In [https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/drupal- association-a...](https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/drupal-association- and-project-lead-statement-regarding-larry-garfield) finally you can find

> The actions that led me to ask Larry to resign involve a woman who attended > Drupal community events with Larry, and was "allowed" to contribute by him.

Also: check who is posting here. If you think _I_ have any axe to grind relating to Drupal then you missed a few things last year. Like [http://drupal.sh/karoly-negyesi-chx-ousted-from-drupal- commu...](http://drupal.sh/karoly-negyesi-chx-ousted-from-drupal-community) this. If there is anybody left who can take a neutral stand now, it's me. I have neither to gain nor to lose from siding with either party. And, I sided with Larry up until the latest statements clarified things.

This doesn't mean others were not doxxing Larry -- but that was not the reason behind asking him to step down.

<comment><USER244> So, a consentual relationship gone wrong. I stand by my earlier statement.

And forgive me, I don't care who you are; I care that someone was railroaded for a consensual relationship held primarily outside the community. Gor is unpopular; it hasn't gained the acceptance homosexual relationships have, and this outrage tainted everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER246> Time to exit Google userbase... I hope I am not too lazy.

</comment><comment><USER247> whatever you do, you cant satisfy everyone. As libertarians say, if technology eliminated sins, the popes and prison guards would go bankrupt...

</comment><comment><USER248> Sounds like alot of engineers are afraid of women

</comment><comment><USER249> how about everyone wears a mask and hides their gender and voice during interviews. that ought to solve the problem

</comment><comment><USER250> Not too, suprising, you simply cannot have such a person at your company that is basically publicly saying women and minorities shouldn't work there.

</comment><comment><USER251> Why is trolling not civil or substantive?

</comment><comment><USER252> You know, I actually thought Sundar's response to this whole thing was actually quite on point. He addresses the issue of needing to be able to discuss points in the memo that are open to discussion (such as the effectiveness of a policy and how to make things more inclusive for all); and at the same time addresses the hostile work environment that was produced as a result of the surrounding context. It sounds like moving forward there is a lot of work to be done to improve the culture and implement policies that can foster diversity of thought as well.

" This has been a very difficult time. I wanted to provide an update on the memo that was circulated over this past week. First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects "each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination." The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn't have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being "agreeable" rather than "assertive," showing a "lower stress tolerance," or being "neurotic." At the same time, there are co- workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google's trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all—are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics—we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions. The past few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct. I'd encourage each of you to make an effort over the coming days to reach out to those who might have different perspectives from your own. I will be doing the same. I have been on work related travel in Africa and Europe the past couple of weeks and had just started my family vacation here this week. I have decided to return tomorrow as clearly there's a lot more to discuss as a group—including how we create a more inclusive environment for all. "

<comment><USER30> _> They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent_

Yet he fired the guy.

Ultimately he had to pick a side: freedom of speech or women who got upset by a bunch of links to scientific studies with a pile of social and cultural commentary on top. He picked the latter.

<comment><USER253> Freedom of speech has nothing to do with keeping your employment when you start infected political discourse at your work.

<comment><USER30> "Infected" discourse, how sad. As if mainstream ideas you don't like are a disease that needs to be wiped out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER205> i absolutely hate the situation that we have found ourselves in. gender and race politics have become totally divorced from the issues of gender and race. firing people who speak their mind is not going to help women in tech and it wont help black kids from being shot in the street in chicago or oakland. not a single person i have ever known who played the politically correct game has ever lifted a single finger to help black people or a little girls interested in tech. the sad truth is that gender politics is now a game of virtue signalling -- a status game among liberal people to see who is the most virtuous, the kindest and most thoughtful. meanwhile, any person who does not fit into a beneficiary position in this game (for example the entire middle section of the united states) is treated with savage cruelty. it is astonishing to see my ultra liberal friends whine endlessly about how unfair life is, how painful life is for certain people, and then turn around and in the same breath condemn and disparage millions of people for absolutely no reason. the truth is that a truly kind person reserves kindness for everyone, and even someone who might be mean or unpleasant at first -- i have found that kindness is much more effective at changing peoples perspective than anything else, so if you want mid-westerners to stop being racist, remember that being horrible and mean to them probably wont make them see things from your perspective.

i think there is some kind of effect where people who are really good at solving complicated puzzles that are right in front of their faces are not so good at solving logical issues that are less tangible or more long term. thats one of my theories, because a lot of people i know that arent dumb at all seem to totally buy into the gender politics thing, even though their beliefs totally fly in the face of logic. maybe its me who is wrong, and there is some subtle aspect of this whole thing that i am not grasping. either way, we are all in this together. its important to be patient with each other and to never allow ourselves to descend into savagery and hatred. and if you do find yourself behaving like that, its ok. we all make mistakes, dust yourself off and try again. i know i have.

</comment><comment><USER254> An excellent opportunity to re-read PG's essay, "What You Can't Say". [1]

 _" What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed."_

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

<comment><USER255> This isn't an issue of "fashion" or "opinion". It's an issue of whether the guy is right or wrong, and if he's wrong[1] whether or not he's caused damage to his employer[2], and if that is true whether it is a firing offense[3].

You don't get to avoid discussion[4] about those subtitled points by retreating to some kind of invented safe space here. Out with it. Is he right?

[1] He is.

[2] He has.

[3] It is.

[4] Yeah, I'm just asserting without evidence too. But only to avoid the pointless flames that result.

<comment><USER256> Right, wrong, damage, and safety are precisely the dressed-up fashions PG's essay talks about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER257> Fun fact: the author of the memo earned a PhD in Biology from Harvard. Google can fire him and get away with it, but it's going to be tough, very tough, for him to be falsely characterized as someone who is misinformed or unscientific. And the court of public opinion may well be more important in this controversy than any court of law.

<comment> brown9-2 Well to judge him on his merits and not his credentials, the memo was neither rigorously argued or all that persuasive.

It is ironic that defenders who claim to want a meritocracy are also defending the author _because of where he went to school_.

<comment><USER50> It was more rigorously argued than simply stating that 'was neither rigorously argued'. I've seen this sentence now a 100th time in this topic, and I haven't seen any of kind of proof for opposing any of his statements. They don't say that the school matters, they say you have to actually refute him instead of saying 'he's just stupid'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER258> My 2 cents.

I did write an essay but this is the TLDR.

Google has made a giant political mistake. Everybody saw this coming. Straight into the fire, Google must have known that even as they did it.

If Google's real aim was non-talent-bias, we already know the solution: blind hiring.

Let's use a little metacognition here. People on HN are highly likely to be in the Bubble (same way as average academic must be left of center). They belong to the Valley and will rationalize these kinds of events all day long, it's worthy of "Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom!". _Rightists are penalized in SV._ That's been true for a while, that is the bottom line. This forum itself used to contain more rightists.

I don't know the future for Google or SV but the upshot is that if I found a company it will explicitly not hire leftists. I will have internal cohesion in my mini one party state. Do I want "diversity of ideas/perspectives". Yes, but the atmosphere is already poisoned by events like this and the firing of Brendan Eich. Plainly nobody has the right answers so I'd opt for political uniformity to keep infighting at bay.

More broadly I suspect Affirmative Action is on the ropes which means that SV is way behind the curve.

tldr;tldr; Somebody as brilliant as Peter Thiel would be fired today, or more likely: never hired. That is where we are at.

<comment><USER61> Good luck with your political oriented filtering, you should add that into the job description, and save people more time.

<comment><USER259> To be fair, I saw the other day, a job posting doing this exact thing for liberal people. It literally said we are looking for liberal like minded folks to help build X.

So this is happening and I find that very fighting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER260> I think I do a good job of clarifying this in another comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953580)

I'll just copy paste the relevant portion here, to save most people a click:

Say a company does one phone-interview, and if passed, moves on to on-sites. But for diverse candidates they do two phone interviews and if either passes they move on to on-sites.

* Unqualified candidates always fail, since neither phone interviews or on-sites have a false-positive rate.

* Qualified non-diverse candidates have a 50% chance of getting the job.

* Qualified diverse candidates have a 75% of getting the job.

At no point do any unqualified candidates receive offers. But at the same time, qualified non-diverse candidates are still rejected at twice the rate as diverse candidates.

<comment><USER261> It says a great deal that some people won't concede that a company like Google doesn't have "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates" even if the author was much more politically correct in their verbiage.

Forgive me if I'm conflating two groups, but isn't it the same people saying Google is incapable of doing such a thing whom are also defending the practice of affirmative action at universities?

I don't understand how affirmative action is deemed acceptable and even encouraged and at universities to improve diversity numbers, but somehow it's inconceivable that a company like Google could lower the bar to hire employees whom have already had the bar lowered for them since the day they were accepted into college?

<comment><USER260> > It says a great deal that some people won't concede that a company like > Google doesn't have "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar > for 'diversity' candidates" even if the author was much more politically > correct in their verbiage.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the author wrote, "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by _decreasing the false negative rate._ " In other words, not that under qualified candidates are given an offer if they're diverse but rather than qualified non-diverse candidates are passed on. This is not a pedantic clarification. I think that for many people the phrase "lowering the bar" overrode the second part about decreasing false negatives. To be fair "lowering the bar" is a very politically loaded term that typically implies that under qualified applicants are (in some people's views) unfairly accepted. The author was sloppy for this poor choice of words, and it likely cost him his job.

Many people would agree that some hiring practices make non-diverse candidates more likely to be rejected when they're qualified, but not that they make diverse candidates more likely to be accepted when unqualified (at least not to a significant degree). In fact, I am one of them. The way my company handles phone screens[1] largely fits this categorization. I think it's an acceptable way of bringing in people of backgrounds we don't often, and that it does not have a particularly large chance of causing under qualified applicants to be accepted. I do think it's fair to criticize the system as discriminating against the non-diverse candidates who don't get extra chances at the phone screen, and that stating as such is not saying that diverse candidate's had the bar lowered for them. But on the whole I think it's justified.

Edit: Here's the link to the comment in which I describe my company's phone- screen policy: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953762)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER262> We value diversity of thought. As long as it's been pre-approved by the Thought Police in HR. sorry Google, you can't have it both ways. To those thinking about leaving, trust me, you'll never look back.

</comment><comment><USER263> I think managerially this is the right move; the guy created chaos and had to go.

I'm not sure that's the right move in any other respect, it certainly doesn't advance the conversation.

<comment><USER264> Do you think his writings were advancing the conversation?

<comment><USER263> I don't know, in a perfect world there would be a debate where the learned would pitch in and enlightenment would ensue, that didn't happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER265> Given all the commotion about this memo I expected it to be some kind of a rant (similar to something I would write in 10 minutes), but it's actually a very well thought out and well articulated piece.

Being fired for writing such a memo is _very_ disappointing. If I were an engineer at Google I would probably be looking for somewhere else to go.

</comment><comment><USER266> Way to prove that he was right.

The problem with diversity programs is that you only need them if you don't treat people equal to begin with. And then, thanks to the diversity program, you still don't treat them as equals, but give an advantage to the group you consider to be weaker.

In the end, it's not about treating people as equals, as it should be, but about political correctness and conformity.

</comment><comment><USER267> I view:

Google's actions in this matter (recrimination against an employee over an internal discussion that leaked), which may be a violation of labor relations,

and

AirBNB's recent actions in doxxing and banning users, and canceling their reservations over their political affiliation, which may be a violation of housing discrimination laws,

as linked.

Companies are trying various ways to enforce their chosen behavioral norms upon users/employees.

Is this par for the course over the last 70 years and we are just noticing it now? Or is it something new?

</comment><comment><USER268> It's not women vs men. It's the feminine and the masculine working together in harmony. We all have a bit of both, unless we're all 100% masculine or 100% feminine, which is not true of my generation or anyone I would actually be able to work with.

It should start with the rise of the feminine in our societal structures to balance the masculine, so that as a society we would balance and harmonize those two archetypes, not cast them as the extremes that they're today. In other words, little girls should not be marketed pink princess dresses while boys get marketed Bob The Builder outfits and tool belts. Gender identity and association starts at an early age and the society we live in promotes the masculine archetype to boys and the feminine archetype to girls. It's wrong. We should be promoting the same balanced masculine/feminine type to both girls and boys. Only then will we see an elimination of gender bias.

</comment><comment><USER269> This makes me wonder if Google will at some point start introducing algorithms that will block search results that dare perpetuate that men and women are not totally equal biologically.

The same justification they used to fire their employee for having a different opinion can be also used to censor search results.

</comment><comment><USER270> Google's code of conduct might be illegal. Regardless of how inaccurate the employee's claims, firing him for it is possibly grounds for improper termination.

</comment><comment><USER271> I guess I won't be working for Google anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER272> If women are such undervalued workers, someone should start a company that just hires women, and they will do very well.

</comment><comment><USER88> Silly Valley at it again.

</comment><comment><USER273> Quite frankly, _any_ employee who posts a 10 page manifesto is deeply suspect.

You're a fucking coder, not the founder. Don't like your gig? Go somewhere else. Grow a pair.

</comment><comment><USER76> [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

<comment><USER21> The legal _right_ to free speech is indeed only about the government. Free and open discourse as a virtue for citizens of a republic is a much broader concept.

<comment><USER51> And even the founding philosophers of the freedom of speech concept said there were limits to the concept - i.e. JSM said that there is a _harm principle_ , where if the expression causes harm then the liberty to express it should rightfully and forcefully be admonished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER274> Will Google also fire employees who 1) publicly support him in internal discussion, or 2) privately support him?

Based on the reasoning of Google's excutives, I don't see why they would not do 1 or 2.

<comment><USER114> 1\. No.

2\. No.

<comment><USER274> Why not? Aren't those people also creating hostile environment for minorities?

<comment><USER114> You asked a pair of simple questions, to which I gave you simple (and correct) answers. I'm not interested in delving into the metaphysics of it all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Oh, were you serious?

Yeah there is a lot you really can't say publicly around here but is that so different than anywhere else? Overall the Bay is _awesome_ and in general I am a flaming liberal but there are times when the right wing bogeyman of authoritarian PC orthodoxy is real and this is one of those times IMO. But it isn't like anywhere else is any better. Look at what the NFL is doing to Colin Kaepernick for desecrating the great temples of right wing "Murca" culture - any football stadium. The Bay does not have a monopoly on this so I wouldn't judge the area too harshly for this one disgusting moment of mob stupidity (IMO).

<comment><USER275> > _hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha_ etc.

Would you please not post like this? It ruins HN threads in more ways than one.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14955239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14955239) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER276> Oh, so stating that women can't handle stress is bad now? Political correctness gone, uh, sane.

Edit: I had hoped the sarcasm was obvious

<comment><USER277> You are saying it like it is a 'fact' that women cannot handle stress. Your anecdotal experiences do not count.

<comment><USER276> It was sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER278> Are comments still open? Test.

</comment><comment><USER279> I can't comment on the manifesto itself (perhaps his reasoning is correct, but he is misrepresenting the hiring practices at Google - how would I now?), but I would have fired him too, for practical reasons only:

\- stirring up the discussion harms the company whatever the outcome

\- not firing him would harm the company more due to public opinion on the subject

Also, if I were the author, I'd probably have shorted GOOG before publishing the document. For entirely practical and obvious reasons...

</comment><comment><USER280> Ironic really... _Suggestions I hope it's clear that I 'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don't fit a certain ideology. I'm also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I'm advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism)._

Google responds to the article by being knee jerk intolerant to the ideology...

Guess he was kinda right?

</comment><comment><USER281> It takes a lot to get fired from Hooli, especially on such a short time line. Applying Occam's Razor here. A) he was an innocent victim who naively expressed his political views via a manifesto and was capriciously fired. B) he was already on the shitlist for being a pain in the ass and conveniently provided HR with the ammo they needed to shitcan him. With A and B being opposite ends of the continuum, I would guess he fell closer to B than A, given that Hooli is kind of hard to get straight out fired from.

</comment><comment><USER282> I think I've figured out what Damore needs: a daughter. Something tells me that he'd do a 180 in 2 seconds if he had a daughter.

</comment><comment><USER147> When I read this manifesto, I thought "well, this is going to generate a lot of news".

What I did when I read it was substitute "woman" for "black", rolled back the clock to Jim Crow south, and read it again.

That might be an instructive exercise for anyone who hasn't actually experienced discrimination, or rather, primarily lives in the dominant side of any culture.

I would rather see this stuff out in the open, rather than hidden behind the glares and glances of colleagues. His firing is unfortunate, but totally understandable. This dialog could have ocured in a much better format.

In the famous words of Bill and Ted, "Be excellent to each other..."

</comment><comment><USER283> A relevant kid's story:

 __The Racist Tree __

 _By Alexander Blechman_

Once upon a time, there was a racist tree. Seriously, you are going to hate this tree. High on a hill overlooking the town, the racist tree grew where the grass was half clover. Children would visit during the sunlit hours and ask for apples, and the racist tree would shake its branches and drop the delicious red fruit that gleamed without being polished. The children ate many of the racist tree's apples and played games beneath the shade of its racist branches. One day the children brought Sam, a boy who had just moved to town, to play around the racist tree.

"Let Sam have an apple," asked a little girl.

"I don't think so. He's black," said the tree. This shocked the children and they spoke to the tree angrily, but it would not shake its branches to give Sam an apple, and it called him a nigger.

"I can't believe the racist tree is such a racist," said one child. The children momentarily reflected that perhaps this kind of behavior was how the racist tree got its name.

It was decided that if the tree was going to deny apples to Sam then nobody would take its apples. The children stopped visiting the racist tree. The racist tree grew quite lonely. After many solitary weeks it saw a child flying a kite across the clover field.

"Can I offer you some apples?" asked the tree eagerly.

"Fuck off, you goddamn Nazi," said the child.

The racist tree was upset, because while it was very racist, it did not personally subscribe to Hitler's fascist ideology. The racist tree decided that it would have to give apples to black children, not because it was tolerant, but because otherwise it would face ostracism from white children.

And so, social progress was made.

<comment> qu4z-2 I always preferred the story of the gay tree, myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER284> I haven't read the memo but I have read some summaries of it. Even before the memo was released I had a negative opinion of it. Not because someone spoke out their mind but because someone decided to just go and shout out their obviously controversial beliefs to the world expecting for his ideas to be taken seriously and for there to be no negative consequences.

If you want people to care about what you think and have to say, you need to spend time and effort cultivating a positive reputation. Otherwise you just seem like an unhinged idiot.

edit: because people seem to be misunderstanding my point or simply downvoting me because I am describing a reality which makes them uncomfortable I will simply reference Douglas Crockford and the Nodevember debacle.

If what occurred to Crockford occurred to some no name software engineer do you believe there would have been the outpouring of support and articles defending his character? No the person would have likely been fired for no good reason and had their name splashed across a bunch of tech blogs as a sexist.

<comment><USER257> 1\. He worked for _Google_. One could argue that he wouldn't have been hired in the first place without "cultivating a positive reputation."

2\. He earned his PhD in Biology at _Harvard University._

What, in your opinion, should James Damore have additionally done to ensure that his thesis would be taken seriously?

<comment><USER285> Cited primary sources, linked his biological argument to his workplace argument with something other than handwaving, avoiding tying his scientific argument to a related but not equivalent political argument, taken into account evidence collected from women who've left the industry and ensured that his model accounted for that, and, uh, basically written an actual thesis? If I'd submitted work like this as an undergraduate I'd have got it back with a lot of red ink and a pretty terrible grade.

(I work for Google and have a PhD in Biology from Cambridge University)

<comment><USER286> > Cited primary sources

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that he _did_ cite sources, but that Gizmodo decided to remove them. In addition they also re- badged this internal email as a "manifesto" and presented it as a war-cry rather than a basis for discussion. Pretty dishonest changes really.

These dishonest changes certainly helped further this shitstorm. Knowing Gizmodo (and their sister-website Jezebel which has no issues with domestic violence against _men_ ), I'm just going to assume this was the intended consequence.

<comment><USER198> He cited some primary sources. And some Wikipedia pages. But I'm comfortable saying that he doesn't review the issues fully.

<comment><USER257> It's a _memo_ , for crying out loud, not a scientific paper. That's why he cites the scientific papers! A full review would require a book-length response.

<comment><USER198> He cites a few papers. And whenever you cite a paper, it's best to cite at least two, to bracket the literature, or a decent review article.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>