Political correctness run amok

[BRUTE]

I read through the end of the "TL;DR" section. Started skimming from this line on: "Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business." What discrimination? A training program for women is discrimination?

this reads to brute as "Spartan_Warrior didn't read it, only the end of the tl;dr section. then he started making up fantasy meanings for what the author has mentioned in the text ("discrimination") according to pre-existing beliefs".

[C40]

I got the same exact impression as Brute

[Spartan_Warrior]

"Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.

These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.

Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.

Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women's representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts. "

So... are the training practices the discriminatory practices he's talking about or not? Because the source material seems to indicate it is.

[Spartan_Warrior]

Hey C40, I did read the part above. Did you?

Maybe try a different strawman besides "Did you not even study every word of the manifesto!?"

It's poorly written and not that interesting, so frankly, of course not, lol.

Now try sticking to the points I did read and did argue.

What's discriminatory about a training group for women? Especially when the science specifically points to different needs for them to learn? How does it hurt Google? How does it hurt this author?

[BRUTE]

It's poorly written and not that interesting, so frankly, of course not, lol.

aaaand Trump

[Spartan_Warrior]

[BRUTE]

brute is astonished and somewhat saddened. apparently, it is possible for a society to reach a point where 2 individuals can read the exact same, 10 page, text, and not only come to completely different conclusions about what was said, what it meant, but also fail to even have a basic conversation about it.

perhaps this is part of reaching a state of post-need. the lack of external pressure removes any need for community and common culture, so it's going to go in this direction until WW3. which can only be a matter of days, with the new Commander in Chief itching to press the nuclear button.

[C40]

Ok. how about we stop with the lols and bullshit and actually talk about it?

-----------------

I haven't read the entire thing either. But I'm not arguing any side here. I don't necessarily disagree with you (Spartan) on an overall impression of the guy who wrote the manifesto. I've been trying to convince you to stop making up what you want to fill in the blanks and make strawman arguments - or to stop just picking the one thing (training for women) and trying to blow that up into your entire argument.

To reply directly to your question about whether training programs for women hurt him: I don't believe the author ever states that the grievances he listed in the manifesto hurt him. So why do you keep saying he's claimed so? Did I miss the part where he did? The closest thing I see is that he uses the word "unfair" near the start of the document.

Since we haven't read all of it, how about we talk about specific parts. I'm going to quote what I see as the actual relevant parts of the manifesto, so we can talk about those. I think the rest seems like filler where he's trying to explain or justify his stance (I believe you described these parts as outdated psychology or something like that.. and I did have a chuckle when he used a statement along the lines of ~~"boys who were castrated at birth still act like men" to support some point)..


Here is what he has in the "Hard of Google's Biases" section, he says:

The Harm of Google's biases
I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:

-- Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5]
-- A high priority queue and special treatment for "diversity" candidates
-- Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
-- Reconsidering any set of people if it's not "diverse" enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
-- Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivise illegal discrimination [6]

These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases and can actually increase race and gender tensions. We're told by senior leadership that what we're doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology[7] that can irreparably harm Google.

Personally, I don't see those things as being particularly harmful to an individual employee. The last point could be really annoying for a individual trying to get into the upper levels of the pyramids, as it could, effectively, harm them. But they're doing pretty darn well for themselves anyways so it's not all that bad. From an individual standpoint, the impact of these are very low and if someone suggest they are the reason they don't get hired/promoted/selected for projects, well, they are probably just aren't good enough themselves and don't want to admit or address it. I've always found there is plenty of opportunity for success, even if you're at a certain moment where some rules or practices stack the deck against you slightly. I think it may even be true that slanted hiring and promotions to help diverse candidates can actually help the men who do get hired. This may have even happened for me. I worked in engineering, and they hired quite a few women. One woman started around the same time as I did. She wasn't nearly as good as I was, and this made me look even better than I actually was. I have no idea how qualified she appeared when they hired her. My point is that people who are already employees and are complaining that the slanted hiring practices hurt them personally, well, they're probably wrong.


But - the guy isn't saying he's personally harmed. He's arguing that these things are harming Google, and that's probably a reasonable argument if, say, Google is having to do a lot of bullet point 3 (if they're using hiring practices that significantly lower the bar for hiring and promotion of diversity candidates). But then, there's money in it for them, at least to a certain point, so IMO, it's likely not something that's worth debating much, other than for folks actually in the company who are making those decisions.

-------------------

Stepping back from that short and unmoving list of complaints, towards the start of the document he says some things that, if as true as he implies, seem like they may be real and significant problems at Google:

...[a] culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber....

.....Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offence with psychological safety, but shaming into silence......

....This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed......

Without being at Google we can't know whether those are real problems there or if they are just this guy arguing from a certain side. If they're real things there, I think (of what he shared in the document) those things are the problems, not the training and hiring stuff he listed later.

-------------------

And here's where he suggests some things that Google should do:

Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap
Below I'll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women that I outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women's representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination. Google is already making strides in many of these areas, but I think it's still instructive to list them:

-- 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 and 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).
Women on average are more cooperative

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

-- Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average
Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them. Allowing and truly endorsing (as part of our culture) part time work though can keep more women in tech.
The male gender role is currently inflexible

-- Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role, but men are still very much tied to the male gender role. If we, as a society, allow men to be more "feminine," then the gender gap will shrink, although probably because men will leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles.

Philosophically, I don't think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principles reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimising for Google — with Google's diversity being a component of that. For example currently those trying 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. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep in mind that Google's funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally acknowledged.

You know... he really doesn't have much in there. There's a lot of filler, and it's seems like mansplaining. The main actionable things I got from it are to make tech leadership less stressful, and to allow more part time work. Those sound great to me, but I don't see them getting many more women into coding or leadership roles.

So that leaves me wondering how bad the shaming and silencing he mentions really is. Is it a big deal at Google? Is it really happening a lot? He didn't share any details, so maybe it's mostly in his head. Or maybe he didn't elaborate on it for some tactful reason. I don't know..

[C40]

Overall, I don't think there's all that much in the manifesto.

I'm curious about who he sent it to, and the specific reasons he got fired. Is he an employee that is involved in related decisions (diversity programs, practices of hiring/promoting/project team selection)? I'd guess that a software engineer is normally not. Who did he send this to? Was it the relevant people, or did he send it to a bunch of unrelevant people? Did he leak it outside of Google (It sounds like it wasn't him), or, what has happened with the people who did?

If, say, he did send it only to the relevant people, why did it get sent around the company virally?

Where I worked, I'd have seen wide internal circulation of a document like this as a VERY bad indicator of current company culture. Sometimes emails of this nature did get sent (I remember hearing about one from an HR manager that got fired, he sent it to about half of the management team, with a long rant, including a list of who he felt were in the plant manager's "inner circle".. he'd sent the email to those not in the circle.. I only heard about many months later from one of those people telling me about it. No one sent it around the company as a viral meme. They were all more mature than that.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@C40: I agree with much of your take. Most of the arguments are frivolous at best.

He may not explicitly claim that the culture is harmful to him in particular, but it does seem like the implied meaning with statements like "unfair". And all the parts about how the "dominant leftist ideology" of Google are stifling to right wing views, etc. The tone (again ironically, given that leftists typically face this accusation) is one of persecution.

Which brings me to this: As far as the alleged culture at Google, to me the way he describes it... it just sounds like corporate culture at every place I've ever worked or heard of anyone working. Like, a very generic-to-the-point-of-stereotypical description of Corporate Culture©. Which is why I find the overworked attempts to politically color it with the "leftist" "political correctness" dog-whistle labels as ironic at best, particularly given that right-wing ideologies are far more likely to increase the authority and power of corporations and CEOs both within and outside the workplace, which is what actually results in the "stifling, silencing" authoritarian culture of private corporations.

OF COURSE you can't just go around saying whatever you want at work. That would be bad for the company's rep. It has nothing to do with diversity or political correctness or anything like that. That's just this particular author's bogeyman.

So I'm inclined to believe him as far as how much it sucks to work at Google, much like it sucks to work anywhere that involves having a boss up your ass not only cracking the whip but enforcing whatever arbitrary company HR guidelines from which deviation could cost you your livelihood. That's the one part I don't question. It's the motivations he attributes and the political theory behind it that riles me.

The questions of whom he sent it to and how it leaked are fair. My impression based on this article's wording that it was "being shared on an internal meme network" led me to believe the author posted it himself on some type of forum like this or SharePoint or some such, but yeah, that's not specified, so who knows. If he sent it to some authority thinking he was making positive suggestions and it leaked from there, it paints a slightly different picture than a disgruntled employee complaining about his unfair lot publicly because some women got a training session or some woman got promoted over him. But... only slightly.

[C40]

Something interesting from a motherboard.vice.com artible:

..... because of the company's notoriously strict confidentiality agreement. (A lawsuit against the company was filed in a San Francisco court last year over the company's "spying program" to prevent leaks.)

That sounds like a sign of a very problematic culture.

Also, there's this:

Google is currently wrapped up in a dispute with the Department of Labor over what an agency official testified are "systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce." Another official told The Guardian in April that it had discovered "compelling evidence of very significant discrimination against women in the most common positions at Google headquarters."

Caveat - I wouldn't take either of these quotes as definitely true. Going by how other parts of the article described what was written in the manifesto, they were obviously uninformed or using sensational exaggerations.


All I can find about who the manifesto author sent it to was that it "was shared on a company mailing list"

[C40]

And then this has a bunch of quotes, tweets, and chatroom remarks mostly from Google employees:

https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/ ... ayMediaAMP

The one certain conclusion I draw is that it seems like it's a really shit place to work. Of course, also, stuff like this gets blown way out of proportion.

It's interesting that at a company that is probably as left/liberal as they get, there are all these claims of sexism/discrimination.

Are those happening because there really is a lot of discrimination? (And if so, why would that happen in a company so full of 'progressive' people? ... I would certainly still expect these types of problems in a very liberal/progressive, but more like the silencing and shaming that the manifesto author is talking about) Or because the employees are extremely sensitive to any perceived sleight and the they take it straight to twitter and lawsuits? What a horrible (and, in a certain context, hilarious) place it'd be if both were true.

[BRUTE]

sweet how C40 has turned this around into a more reasonable discussion

brute's main point would probably be this: no matter if an individual agrees with the assessment of the manifesto's author about Google's culture or the unfairness of said practices, there is nothing in the manifesto that is sexist or "threatening" in any way. all the outrage is based on fantasy statements he does not make. he does NOT say women are unqualified for engineering, or coding. he does NOT say anything negative about women at all. in fact, he explicitly welcomes more diversity and makes suggestions on how to improve the job environment to enable more women to enjoy it.

was it smart to post this publicly, or whatever the author did? no.

but there is simply no outrage warranted unless there is a deeper cultural problem that must be squashed at any cost by upper management, instead of talking about these things.

[C40]

the outrage is based on fantasy statements he does not make. he does NOT say women are unqualified for engineering, or coding.

It's funny that one of the original articles talking about the manifesto based on reports from Google employees, but before they had the actual manifesto, said exactly that - that he claimed women are biologically inferior at coding, and also that he claimed it is more important to ensure conservative employees feel they have a voice than to support diversity.

People blow shit so far out of proportion. It drives me crazy, and I think it's a good example of what this thread is about - political correctness having run amok.

[Dragline]

unfortunately, Dragline is misinformed. female humans actually made up a larger percentage of programmers in the 1950s, much larger than today. this is mentioned in the article as well. hordes of female programmers broke the Nazi crypto code in WW2.

the rate of human females in programming has gone DOWN over time. as is demonstrated and explained in the article.

Source please, and post WWII and not from ignorant article hastily drafted that confuses 1850 with 1950. Women were employed out of necessity during the war, and were expected to retreat to domestic occupations so as to Make America Great Again, with established gender roles that were the norm of that society. Have you never watched "The Best Days of Our Lives", which won the Academy Award in 1946?

Brute appears to be disturbed by his views being challenged. #sad

[C40]

Here is the entire manifesto that the Google guy posted, including a whole bunch of links that he had in the document:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... hamber.pdf


And I noticed that I forgot to include in my post a whole bunch more suggestions that he head at the end of the document.

[C40]

Have you never watched "The Best Days of Our Lives", which won the Academy Award in 1946?

Dude.. you are so old

(I'm just joking around here)

[Dragline]

Indeed, and I do appreciate the humor. But you would find value in understanding the 20th Century history of America if you watched every Academy Award winner in a row since the inauguration of the award. (These are some of the things old people do.)

Compare, for example "Mrs. Miniver" (1942 winner) with "Dunkirk" (first in theater movie I've seen in 18 months). Same topic. Somewhat different treatment.

[Riggerjack]

Source please, and post WWII and not from ignorant article hastily drafted that confuses 1850 with 1950

Um, yeah. If you read his post, he meant 1850. But it's clearly not the only part you misread. Here's that link again. Try reading it in the voice it was written in, rather than as the angsty snotty teenagers voice you seem to be using.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/co ... fferences/

[Dragline]

I already did, thank you.

Do you disagree that 1950 is more accurate than 1850? Or do you need me to dissect the article in more detail before you agree its pretty crappy and a poorly supported exercise in confirmation bias all in all?

Don't know why you would defend it -- not your circus, not your monkeys.