Ok. how about we stop with the lols and bullshit and actually talk about it?
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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the rest seems like filler where he's trying to explain or justify his stance (I believe you described these parts as outdated psychology or something like that..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:
manifesto guy wrote:
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.
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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:
manifesto guy wrote:
...[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.
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And here's where he suggests some things that Google should do:
manifesto wrote:
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..
