Google Employee's Memo: "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", Goes Internally Viral - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE=Boaraes;52550314]I'm hesitant to agree with this because it's entirely possible for someone to be both empathetic and logical, and I think it's the best way to be rather than of the extremes.[/QUOTE] Well the ideal mode of being is to exist somewhere in the middle, be aware of any deviant biases from that median and understand which approach is more relevant, productive and constructive/erasive of suffering for a given situation. If anything i think the author kowtowed to emotional reasoning a little too much, frankly. But was otherwise unobjectionable

[QUOTE=Boaraes;52549762]they just stopped him from being an employee because he expressed an opinion that directly criticizes what is wrong with blind diversity for diversity's sake[/QUOTE] He sent out a memo that violates the company's code of conduct. You can have any opinion you want, but if you start sharing it at work it'll come under the scrutiny of the company's policies and if they specifically told you "hey don't start shit at work because your coworker is a woman," you're probably going to be terminated when you start shit at work because your coworker is a woman.

[QUOTE=Paramud;52550527]He sent out a memo that violates the company's code of conduct. You can have any opinion you want, but if you start sharing it at work it'll come under the scrutiny of the company's policies and if they specifically told you "hey don't start shit at work because your coworker is a woman," you're probably going to be terminated when you start shit at work because your coworker is a woman.[/QUOTE] The Code of Conduct provision is that the employee must "do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination." This is an at-will country but if you think that's enough to deny unemployment, would you be interested in some bridge holdings I'm offering to sell?

[QUOTE=Dave_Parker;52549785]As always, some people agree with the firing, some disagree, and some think it didn't go far enough. (the comments are the fun read) [media]http://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/894738041759084544[/media][/QUOTE] I like this one myself. [media]https://twitter.com/nickmirto/status/894756613902422019[/media]

Him being fired just again proves both mine and general point of fascism notions being prevalent in this inclusiveness of minorities in workplaces. "You are either with us or against us". I might sound very blunt to the point of offensive, but I am pretty much with the position of Trilby Hallow. And this sort of shit must stop.

[QUOTE=kharkovus;52545026]Idk why people relate reddit to conservative thoughts so much? Most redditors I see are pretty frikkin liberal. 4chan is more conservative.[/QUOTE] Reddit tends to be associated with whatever a given group of people don't like because almost everyone with a reason to do so tries to break the system for their own subreddit's gain, but none of them ever get to the point of being too big of a problem to selectively ignore. Discussion on 4chan probably on average has a much more conservative slant but this bias is likely a product of moot's investment in the idea of containment (which doesn't work) influencing the site's growth up until his departure from the site, resulting in an uneven version of Reddit's problem, driven by spamming of posts rather than votes.

This memo should have stayed on that internal network. The entire reason this is a problem is that it went public. I agree with some points, I disagree with other, BUT I definitely think there should be a way for them to voice that opinion, as it's not calling for violence or harm and definitely better supported than your typical pseudointellectual Gamergate shit (from either side). I also I do not believe Google's HR firing him is "proving his point that all liberals are fascists SJW REEEEE" because I think Google's HR department has a stupidly tough choice to make. Do they choose to appear to side with an obviously unpopular, alienating opinion about their employees? Do they denouce the article and separate themselves from the opinion? They choose what they believe aligns with the company's policies, employees, and general PR. There will always be a side that feels that all of this guy's points were proved instrinsically "right" or "wrong" based on the outcome. I think this article was not strong enough to not become politicized and lose its debate-worth from the beginning. I think the guy did a poor job of removing his political views (like, grouping and denouncing 'the left' isn't part of a logical argument). But-- now that it's public and part of the highly polarized political ether, all substance in this article is lost and the points cannot be debated without hyper-political bias. All you have to do is watch the T_D and Antifa posters all suddenly come out of the woodwork on shit like /r/programming

I wonder if the response from some people would be different if he suggested that asian people were fundamentally better at math than all other races.

[QUOTE=CruelAddict;52550675]Him being fired just again proves both mine and general point of fascism notions being prevalent in this inclusiveness of minorities in workplaces. "You are either with us or against us". I might sound very blunt to the point of offensive, but I am pretty much with the position of Trilby Hallow. And this sort of shit must stop.[/QUOTE] I'm just imagining a corporate employee publishing a public manifesto claiming that many of their black co-workers are unsuited for the job and were only hired as affirmative action, and then saying it's evidence of groupthink and intolerance when they get fired. Like, no, it's not about quashing ideological dissent, it's that the employee is creating an overtly hostile work environment for a protected class of co-workers, and if the company doesn't get rid of him ASAP then they're opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Whether he's right or wrong, factually correct or not, backed up with decades of scientific study or ranting nonsense, it doesn't matter in the slightest. As soon as other co-workers have justifiable reason to think they're going to be treated differently by him on account of their race, sex, or any other protected characteristic, he's a liability.

Was it really necessary to fire the guy? Seems like a bit of an overreaction. Also aren't they proving his point by doing this? Jumping straight to firing someone rather than debating with them?

[QUOTE=Lambeth;52550818]I wonder if the response from some people would be different if he suggested that asian people were fundamentally better at math than all other races.[/QUOTE] Where did the employee suggest anything like that?

[QUOTE=Rockeiro123;52550896]Where did the employee suggest anything like that?[/QUOTE] He said science shows men are typically better at systems-focused tasks like programming and that a policy of forced diversity was leading to underqualified people being hired. Whether it's scientifically accurate or not, it's publicly questioning the qualifications of all his female co-workers by outright stating that some of them don't deserve to be there. Like I said before, that's practically a textbook example of creating a hostile workplace environment. The people who think it's unfair for him to get fired because he deserves to be 'rationally debated' aren't thinking in the context of a workplace, where an employee's freedom of opinion [I]always[/I] comes secondary to protecting the legal safety and functional cohesion of the company, both of which are directly undermined by this manifesto. If he had raised these concerns in private with his management and then been fired, then I would absolutely call that silencing ideological dissent or however you want to phrase it, because in that case it would actually just have been a matter of personal opinion with no other ramifications. But when it became public and visible to all employees of the company as well as the general public, it became a problem for the company.

[QUOTE=catbarf;52550956]If he had raised these concerns in private with his management and then been fired, then I would absolutely call that silencing ideological dissent or however you want to phrase it, because in that case it would actually just have been a matter of personal opinion with no other ramifications. But when it became public and visible to all employees of the company as well as the general public, it became a problem for the company.[/QUOTE] These were raised in private according to the article, the memo was leaked and posted on google's internal forum.

[QUOTE=catbarf;52550840] Whether he's right or wrong, factually correct or not, backed up with decades of scientific study or ranting nonsense, it doesn't matter in the slightest. As soon as other co-workers have justifiable reason to think they're going to be treated differently by him on account of their race, sex, or any other protected characteristic, he's a liability.[/QUOTE] Bigotry at its finest.

[QUOTE=Cliff2;52551033]These were raised in private according to the article, the memo was leaked and posted on google's internal forum.[/QUOTE] And if they remained private I imagine he would be much more likely to keep his job than it's currently looking. The fact is that they're public now, and the company has to respond accordingly, regardless of what he intended.

[media]https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/894834730461483008[/media] DON'T DO IT. He doesn't want you to be a journalist, Russia Just want's you to gain access to google/ Manipulate

[QUOTE=catbarf;52551068]And if they remained private I imagine he would be much more likely to keep his job than it's currently looking. The fact is that they're public now, and the company has to respond accordingly, regardless of what he intended.[/QUOTE] Even if it were private, he probably would still have been fired. Companies just don't like it when low level employees kick up a storm.

Its probably a lot more to do with women generally being less interested in the field than less competent. I mean, it's not like women fail at the fields more often than men, they're just less likely to make the attempt in the first place.

I thought Sundar's response was very appropriate and respectful to both sides, or at least the valid parts of the argument the author was making.

[QUOTE=OmniConsUme;52549665]It isn't over The guy has a case for wrongful termination. [URL="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google-to-punish-engineer-over-anti-diversity-memo-commentary.html"]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google-to-punish-engineer-over-anti-diversity-memo-commentary.html[/URL][/QUOTE] According to NYT, he is most likely taking legal action: [media]https://twitter.com/daiwaka/status/894747912701263873[/media]

Interesting. Can you even win a lawsuit against google as a regular person?

[QUOTE=catbarf;52550840]I'm just imagining a corporate employee publishing a public manifesto claiming that many of their black co-workers are unsuited for the job and were only hired as affirmative action, and then saying it's evidence of groupthink and intolerance when they get fired. [/QUOTE] So I read through the entire thing now. I'm wondering what you read because it's wildly different from what's in the memo. I see him bringing up studies how women in general prefer environments and procedures like X, and that they should work towards making their work environment more conducive to that to help solve the gap. (For example, promoting more cooperative initiatives) Nothing in there suggesting women or minorities are unsuited for the job. Less interested in is not the same as incapable of.

[QUOTE=catbarf;52550840]I'm just imagining a corporate employee publishing a public manifesto claiming that many of their black co-workers are unsuited for the job and were only hired as affirmative action, and then saying it's evidence of groupthink and intolerance when they get fired. Like, no, it's not about quashing ideological dissent, it's that the employee is creating an overtly hostile work environment for a protected class of co-workers, and if the company doesn't get rid of him ASAP then they're opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Whether he's right or wrong, factually correct or not, backed up with decades of scientific study or ranting nonsense, it doesn't matter in the slightest. As soon as other co-workers have justifiable reason to think they're going to be treated differently by him on account of their race, sex, or any other protected characteristic, he's a liability.[/QUOTE] I would consider a work environment where you cannot express certain opinions, even if you're polite about it, even if they're directly relevant to management behaviour, pretty overtly hostile. You can't please everyone. It's either "we value diversity, deal with that or get out" or "we value freedom of expression, deal with that or get out." And then you end up with either a culture where ethnic/sexual/etc. minorities might feel disrespected/uncomfortable (sucks to be you), or one where expressing dissenting views is punished and people who hold them feel disrespected/uncomfortable (sucks to be you). Silicon Valley currently has the former. Regardless of whether or not affirmative action creates more productive teams*, firing "manifest bro" was clearly in Google's best financial interests, because Silicon Valley does not respond well to dissent from leftist cultural values right now. And I wish Silicon Valley (and the world at large) instead had a culture that said, "freedom of opinion is valued second only to friendliness." Where ability to tolerate polite discourse is expected from everyone, and firing someone for engaging in it is an obviously unjustifiably poor business decision, because [I]that's[/I] what gets you torches and pitchforks. *: I think there's plausible arguments for either position, but in the end you can produce plausible arguments for anything and Sociology Is Really Hard and despite social scientists' best efforts almost nothing from the field can be treated as accepted scientific fact right now. One in favor of diversity / affirmative action would be the idea that, assuming there [I]are[/I] significant gender differences in cognition (regardless of the degree to which they originate in culture vs. genetics), the smaller the gender gap in software engineering the greater the team's breadth of skills and creativity in problem-solving etc.

So I actually found the memo really compelling, and apparently people with actual degrees in relevant fields seem to generally agree with it's approach. I don't get the feeling at all that this is some MGTOW spouting out biotruths, and frankly it's rather refreshing to get that kind of information from someone who doesn't so obviously have a chip on his shoulder or an agenda to push. That said, I'm with catbarf on this one. He could be absolutely 100% right but this doesn't really seem like an appropriate workplace interaction to me, and I can definitely see why a company like Google would at the very least consider letting him go. At that point he is an HR liability for the company. I don't have enough information to say whether or not he [B][I]should[/I][/B] have been fired or what I would do if I was in charge, but I get it. [QUOTE=WhyNott;52551837]Interesting. Can you even win a lawsuit against google as a regular person?[/QUOTE] My understanding is that California has more generous worker-protection laws than most states. On the one hand, the firing happened incredibly quickly, maybe too quickly for anyone at Google with legal insight into it to take control. On the other, with a huge amount of business being done by Google in California I'm sure they have an army of lawyers who knows every part of employer law.

[QUOTE=Lambeth;52550818]I wonder if the response from some people would be different if he suggested that asian people were fundamentally better at math than all other races.[/QUOTE] It's always okay to shit on asians tho.

[QUOTE=Cliff2;52551838]So I read through the entire thing now. I'm wondering what you read because it's wildly different from what's in the memo. I see him bringing up studies how women in general prefer environments and procedures like X, and that they should work towards making their work environment more conducive to that to help solve the gap. (For example, promoting more cooperative initiatives) Nothing in there suggesting women or minorities are unsuited for the job. Less interested in is not the same as incapable of.[/QUOTE] I didn't mean to imply that I was analogizing the argument in the memo, only highlighting the absurdity of CruelAddict's position- that creating a hostile work environment should be accepted and tolerated as just opinions, and that it's 'fascism' to give such an offending employee the boot. I agree with a lot of the things in the memo, but I think it's important that people understand that HR isn't concerned with morals or politics or freedoms, they're concerned with the bottom line and the safety of the company. Senior engineers are expensive to train, but the instant this guy became more expensive to keep than to replace, his fate was sealed. I think the same basic message, phrased and structured more tactfully and without the adversarial slant, could have been accepted with far less controversy and he'd still have a job. But the outrage machine has already spun up, so what else is Google supposed to do?

[QUOTE=WhyNott;52551837]Interesting. Can you even win a lawsuit against google as a regular person?[/QUOTE] UBER got pwn'd by its employees...so... Ok, it's only David vs Goliath But who knows. [editline]8th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=catbarf;52552100]I didn't mean to imply that I was analogizing the argument in the memo, only highlighting the absurdity of CruelAddict's position- that creating a hostile work environment should be accepted and tolerated as just opinions, and that it's 'fascism' to give such an offending employee the boot. I agree with a lot of the things in the memo, but I think it's important that people understand that HR isn't concerned with morals or politics or freedoms, they're concerned with the bottom line and the safety of the company. Senior engineers are expensive to train, but the instant this guy became more expensive to keep than to replace, his fate was sealed. I think the same basic message, phrased and structured more tactfully and without the adversarial slant, could have been accepted with far less controversy and he'd still have a job. But the outrage machine has already spun up, so what else is Google supposed to do?[/QUOTE] I didn't think firing him was fair at all Then I read your "makes it seem like all their female counterparts are incompetent" and then it clicked Goes on to show he wasn't smart enough to see the consequences of what he wrote... Some people can't handle group dynamics...

[QUOTE=Raidyr;52551932] That said, I'm with catbarf on this one. He could be absolutely 100% right but this doesn't really seem like an appropriate workplace interaction to me, and I can definitely see why a company like Google would at the very least consider letting him go. At that point he is an HR liability for the company.[/QUOTE] That is my stance as well. He could be absolutely correct on every single assertion he makes, but at the end of the day, [i]that simply isn't his role in the company.[/i] Making such assertions has, as baggage, the implication that he will act on those assertions (and believes others should as well). And believing that certain people, [i]who are his co-workers[/i], are biologically inferior at their jobs than others, by itself isn't a bad thing. But if those co-workers believe he is going to [i]act[/i] on these believes, and [i]treat[/i] them as if they're inferior at their jobs, simply because of some biological traits they have no control over, then that is basically a text-book definition of a hostile work environment. Doubly so if people believe that others, not just him, are going to follow his example and treat them as inferior. This sort of manifesto and the assertions it makes, right or wrong, are things that belong at the level of making hiring policy. Not being spread around among co-workers. It is the job of the hiring individuals and the hiring-policy-making team to tackle these issues. That is not the job of people at his level in the company - their job is to synergize with their team members and be as efficient as possible. Making an unnecessarily hostile work environment is not only counter to that job, but it is antithetical to it. I'm not saying he should have been [b]fired[/b] for this memo, but definitely that he was overstepping his bounds. Some sort of disciplinary action is in order, I believe. Maybe not firing, but some sort of consequence regardless.

[QUOTE=catbarf;52550956]He said science shows men are typically better at systems-focused tasks like programming and that a policy of forced diversity was leading to underqualified people being hired. Whether it's scientifically accurate or not, [B][I]it's publicly questioning the qualifications of all his female co-workers by outright stating that some of them don't deserve to be there.[/I][/B] Like I said before, that's practically a textbook example of creating a hostile workplace environment.[/QUOTE] Show me where he made that claim. But i can save you the time, because he didn't. He basically said "The gender wage gap (which no reputable economist finds credible) and a non equitable/equal outcome distribution of arbitrarily defined social groups is not sufficiently explained by the ideological position of supposed socially constructed systematic/marxist oppression but by very well documented differences in personality trait distribution between those groups that by median for those groups predicts a predilection for any given field that roughly aligns with the actual end outcomes" The claim isn't that "...therefore anyone who's (still arbitrarily defined) group doesn't fit the base set of characteristics is not qualified to be there", because what goddamn sense does that make, because clearly if they're there, then they have the relevant personality that made them interested in that field of their own natural accord, but "...and that this evidence is clearly in line with well established science and statistical models of sex distributed personality traits, so therefore the social constructionist and systematic oppression theory is incorrect and predicating policy on it will do more harm than any supposed good as it's actually working against the natural inclination of individuals in service of an incorrect model of society and social behavior" I don't believe you actually read the essay if you came to the conclusion that this was a biological realist argument that runs against the free will of the individual based on absolute group traits, because that's exactly what he's specifically objecting to. Also holy fuck this comment [T]https://puu.sh/x59bV/b9df552694.png[/T] "One side is always more right and things being up for debate is disturbing". Words fail me.

[QUOTE=Swebonny;52551960]It's always okay to shit on asians tho.[/QUOTE]You may want to consider elaborating on that.