Google Cancels Town Hall To Discuss Diversity In Its Ranks (nbcnews.com) 786
NBC News originally reported: Google employees will gather for a town hall meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss the tensions ignited by a memo circulated inside the company that claimed to explain why more women are not engineers. Town hall meetings are nothing new at Google, but this one will likely be different after the so-called "Google Manifesto" went viral over the weekend, adding fresh fuel to the debate around gender bias in Silicon Valley. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in an email earlier this week that he would cut his family vacation short in order to facilitate the forum. "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," he wrote. "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." The town hall comes amid a report from The Guardian that as many as 60 women are considering filing a class action lawsuit against Google, alleging sexism and wage disparity.
UPDATE: NBC News now reports the event has been cancelled, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai saying "Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be 'outed' publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall... we need to step back and create a better set of conditions for us to have the discussion." Instead of the company-wide format, Google will now hold several smaller forums "to gather and engage with Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely," Pichai wrote.
UPDATE: NBC News now reports the event has been cancelled, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai saying "Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and worried they may be 'outed' publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall... we need to step back and create a better set of conditions for us to have the discussion." Instead of the company-wide format, Google will now hold several smaller forums "to gather and engage with Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely," Pichai wrote.
Canceled. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
Re:Canceled. (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of a "townhall meeting" is dialog. Google had already made it clear that they want a monologue. Cancelling it was very sensible.
Rush (Score:4, Informative)
RUSH: They can’t be open about what they think. They have to follow the Google groupthink or they’re going to be canned. They’re not allowed to dissent. And yet these are people claiming to be the greatest defenders of First Amendment free speech.
Re: (Score:3)
They tried to create a forum to discuss things, but people said they were scared to participate because they feared being identified
Yeah, but it's not the ones disagreeing with him that were scared. Shit, some of them used their disagreement to get themselves a bonus day off earlier this week.
Looking at how anyone not agreeing with this guy on Slashdot gets hammered down with -1 mods, it seems they have a point.
Looking at how anyone agreeing with this guy on 90% of the media sites out there gets hammered down with abuse and threats, it seems they do indeed have a fucking point.
Meanwhile the sheer number of your posts that I see suggest that people disagreeing with him on Slashdot are in fact not getting modded to oblivion at all. I don't browse at -1, but
Re:Canceled. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed, my first thought is, why would anyone show up who has a Wrong Thought? Nobody wants to get fired.
Celine's second law [wikipedia.org] at play.
Re:Purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Purpose (Score:3)
The purpose of any townhall meeting of any corporation is to smear the bad news (you are all fckd) with management talk, mislead the employees to keep working hard until they are fckd and reaffirm the party line. I for one avoid them as the plague but was told my absence has been noted. /. Please
All this reminds me so much of the good old totalitarian regime I've lived in the past. Hilarious for sure but deeply troubling as well.
BTW, I'm astounded (in a very negative way) by the comments about this stuff on
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They plan on outing and executing them in the "smaller forums".
Instead of the company-wide format, Google will now hold several smaller forums "to gather and engage with Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely," Pichai wrote.
The goal here is to avoid having one big meeting where dissent can erupt. A bunch of smaller meetings can be more controlled, more staged, and more scripted. if one of them goes south, it won't get as much attention, Google can downplay it as a bad example, play it off as being an isolated incident, etc. while pushing the narrative and example of one of the more scripted / well-behaved sessions. They can use the dissent from any of the smalle
Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you fire someone for voicing an opinion, and then turn around and say that people should feel safe speaking out, don't be surprised when nobody believes you.
Re:Yeah. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're perfectly safe to speak out--as long as it's in agreement.
Re: (Score:3)
You're acting like he's Martin Luther nailing the thesis to the church door.
Well, in a way... Back then, Luther also only wanted to engage in a dialogue and not topple the church...
Re:Purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
Failure to attend the requisite Two Minutes of Hate will be interpreted as dissent.
Re:Purpose (Score:5, Funny)
As if most engineers attend that sort of event.
What about engineerettes?
Re: Purpose (Score:5, Funny)
If women engineers attend, then they are just reinforcing the manifesto's position that women gravitate to social events more than men.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I disagree. If we take James Damore's criticism as fact then it is not the ability of women to be engineers that is the problem, they have the ability but are choosing to do other things. It is the structure of the company and the way that the positions within that company work that discourages women from participating at higher levels and at higher positions.
So artificially boosting women in that workplace seems like the wrong tack as it does not address the reasons that women aren't already flocking to
Re: (Score:3)
It is.
When it is impossible to state your position without fearing repercussions, it is impossible to have a reasonable dialogue about it. What we have here is the equivalent to the situation that you had in medieval witch hunts and the red scare of the McCarthy era. A group that is in power issues the official doctrine. Whether this is "The church is always right", "We must defend against the Soviet threat" or "Equality uber alles". Anyone disagreeing with this doctrine is labeled a witch, a commie or a mi
Re:Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
how do they plan on outing the wrong thinkers?
According to TFA they have already been outed. Googlers were allowed to pre-submit questions, and told they could do so anonymously, yet their questions along with their names have been leaked and published on several websites.
In terms of ineptness and incompetence, Google is handling this about as well as the British handled Gallipoli.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Google is handling this about as well as the British handled Gallipoli.
Learned, educated references to history will not be tolerated in this forum! This is clear discrimination against all things idiotic [youtube.com]!!!
Re:Purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
along with their names have been leaked and published on several websites
That's inaccurate. Some of the questions were published, but not the names of the people asking them or any other identifying information.
Unless you have a link demonstrating otherwise...
Re:Purpose (Score:5, Informative)
Wired has a writeup [wired.com]
Some upvoted questions:
Of course, the same article has such gems as:
Which is of course not at all what the document said.
Re:Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
“The doc asserted that Google has a lower bar for diversity candidates,” reads one question ranked highly by employees in an internal voting system. “This is hurting minority Googlers because it creates the perception that they are less qualified. What can we do to combat that perception?”
Nothing. That is the problem with affirmative action: by definition some candidates are less qualified. Which inevitably means that all members of the group are looked at skeptically, because you just don't know which ones are qualified, and which ones are not.
Affirmative action creates a hostile work environment.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree with you if you substitute "affirmative action" with "quotas". Affirmative action is just a system where you measure your hiring and employee mix vs. the available pool of candidates to make sure you don't have bias in your system. Sometimes you need to take concrete steps to counter this bias, but only foolish companies use quotas. More often it would be focused recruiting to improve the candidate pool.
Re:Purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
You have some issues with facts:
(a) The woman engineer who's paid less and insists that people citing scientific research after being asked for their opinion constitutes a 'hostile work environment'
(b) the male engineer who responds to a request for dialog about diversity with an essay citing more than two dozen sources and supports increasing diversity in a more effective way
It's objectively better to support B, but since one side can't stop lying they'll mindlessly go with A, regardless of the facts.
Re:Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
Your conclusions are based on faulty data, study A and B was debunked by X, Y, and Z.
This is not what happened.
What happened is approximately like this:
Personal insults. Outright lies. Straw man take downs.
Even your response, reasonably civil, assumes that James Damore only cited Wikipedia. This is not the case. He cited peer reviewed articles from respectable journals.
I understand actually reading what he wrote might end up getting you expelled from your social group, but you can still do it in secret. This way you won't sound quite as misinformed to anyone who read the article.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Personal biases are hard to kick when reading the research. We can look at the studies that point out that women are more neurotic, agreeable, etc while men are more aggressive, goal oriented, etc and that's colored by how we already feel. This guy takes the conclusion from them that women are inherently less capable than the men. I can read the same study and wonder if the reason why women are neurotic and agreeable is because men
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can read the same study and wonder if the reason why women are neurotic and agreeable is because men are that aggressive and how that dynamic has worked out on a cultural level.
Which is the first reasonable response I've heard. And I could counter by pointing out that it's still an existing general sex difference rather than sexism in the industry, or with studies of how people are kinder to women and protect them from aggression and how culture (in general) acts to amplify almost any existing sex difference. Then you could come up with a response, and the next thing you know we'd be having a rational discussion.
But we can't have that, because the opening move of everyone on you
Re:Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy takes the conclusion from them that women are inherently less capable than the men.
The article did no such thing. You will have to stretch definition of 'capable' in unusual ways to make such claim. To summarize the article, it states that men on average are more focused on status while women are more focused on relationships. Neither of these would fit traditional definition of capable.
Re:Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish it weren't such a difficult discussion for people to have these days.
Personal biases are hard to kick when reading the research. We can look at the studies that point out that women are more neurotic, agreeable, etc while men are more aggressive, goal oriented, etc and that's colored by how we already feel. This guy takes the conclusion from them that women are inherently less capable than the men. I can read the same study and wonder if the reason why women are neurotic and agreeable is because men are that aggressive and how that dynamic has worked out on a cultural level. I can see the guy claiming these are inherent biological differences and think that while the inherent biological differences are significant the culture can't be written off to make that claim.
If it were merely a matter of what the studies say and conclude then the utter shit storms we see wouldn't be happening the way they are.
Yeah that would be confusing cause and effect.
But say for sake of argument, that testosterone levels are a cause, which lead men to be more competitive, be more aggressive in dealing with situations, and generally be more willing to work longer hours, make more sacrifices for work, and so on.
Now, if that is true, for sake of argument, then I would think that we NEED to research possible male female trait differences, in order to expose the ways in which work culture has become SKEWED by male culture.
In other words, if men tend to be more aggressive, and women more relationship-oriented and intuitive and flexible ("neurotic"), then we need to CHANGE work culture so that its standards more suit both men AND women.
Because if we don't, then that leaves women as forced to work in a male version of work culture, and so of course women will be driven out of the workplace.
Just like, if the workplace culture values people who can cheat, then that'll drive out the honest people.
Now, simply saying that nobody can ask whether men and women on the whole have some different tendencies, just IGNORES the problem, and leaves women having to adapt to male culture. And some individual women will do this very well as the individual is always different, but if the question is, why isn't 50% of our workforce female, then the average traits do matter.
The PC thing is when we believe that culture IS language (postmodernism came from writers and literature, and is heavily language biased -- biased to looking for causes in language rather than in science or material things) and so it is PC to see all social problems like racism and sexism are embedded in the structure of language itself, so all you have to do is forbid people from saying certain things and the biases will "disappear" -- which sadly entirely misses the role of other factors.
So by simply banning certain talk they avoid having to face the issue that maybe their inherently male biased culture would have to CHANGE. This is PC being used to oppress women and hold on to whatever male-oriented advantage Google imagines it holds. Which ignores that female traits are just as important if not more so in the workplace.
There is a big difference between what a job is trying to achieve and how it goes about achieving it. Maybe Google+ would have worked a lot better if the culture hadn't been "engineering" (ie. male) dominated, for example. Or that the culture of hanging our at the office all times of day isn't actually a young male thing, and women tend to want to have a life, as well as succeed in work.
But if you can avoid the question as Google is doing, you can keep the status quo.
Re: (Score:3)
cites Wikipedia articles as sources, many of which have been flagged for problematic and incorrect sources
Really? Let's look at one central to his argument - say 'Sex differences in psychology' - I see flags for needing non-primary sources, and ones for needing clarity and expansion, ... nothing about being 'incorrect' ...
Oh, gee. Should have seen 'problematic and incorrect' and realized you meant 'for my personal beliefs'.
you cannot make a claim, cite an unreliable source
Which you avoided by not citing anything at all. Setting a standard for others that you fail at even more than they do - not the best move in an argument.
Re: (Score:3)
the white male engineer who thinks it's the natural order of things that non-whites and women are inferior, and cites pseudo-scientific research
He doesn't think anyone is inferior, and didn't cite any pseudo-science. I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
Re:Purpose (Score:4, Informative)
This is why Cassie Jaye's Red Pill documentary is one of the most important films to come out in the past year, its basic argument is that men are already not valued by society and the increased emphasis on women's issues only reinforces the current state of affairs. So a jury wouldn't side with the male engineer, because no one would actually expect them to. It changes nothing. But if the woman engineer wins a settlement, this only increases social entropy, more women will be emboldened to take advantage, to get some money just for being women.
Re:Purpose (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with the Red Pill and the people who interviews in it is that they don't have the solutions. They have ideologies that the film doesn't challenge, instead just letting them make their case with minimal criticism or counter points.
Have you any idea how fucking rare it is for those cases to be heard without being shouted down, disrupted by fire alarms, disallowed due to threats of violence?
Maybe if people would fucking acknowledge that
men are undervalued by society and have many genuine issues
then attention could switch to finding solutions. Right now every fucking law going through that has any gender variance in it is pro-women and anti-men. Every fucking law.
feminism is the solution to these problems
Feminism is a stupid term to use, it has multiple interpretations and can not be objectively defined. People identifying as feminists were the very fucking people inciting (or committing) violence on the people interviewed in The Red Pill.
Rather than being resentful or jealous of the freedoms and rights that women have, they should be looking for the same kind of liberation from traditional male roles.
Traditional male roles? Like dying for your country? Oh, that's right - feminists took legal action to prevent Selective Service being imposed on women.
Like suffering domestic violence in silence? Oh, that's right, feminists shouted down the only fucking MP that asked for gender neutral domestic violence legislation during the debates in parliament last year.
Like paying for someone else to raise children they can't even see? Oh, wait, the Government imposed legislation that incentivises women to lie about their partners in order to get the legal assistance required to retain custody, resulting in even fewer men being able to raise their own children.
finding workable solutions that have been tried and proven
Men are finding workable solutions too. Like refusing to have children, refusing to get married, and laughing in the face of the women asking, "Where are all the good men?"
Re: (Score:3)
The woman engineer who's paid less and faces an environment where people say women are naturally bad at being useful
Nobody says that. Not even the guy that got fired. The issue here is that people think that other people said that, and people repost/retweet/repeat this fake news 24x7 causing more people to get their panties in a bunch.
This thing deserves the award of the biggest tempest in a teapot since donglegate.
Re:Canceled. (Score:5, Funny)
They've basically built a company populated with rabid malcontents that are prepared to harm or kill their cow-orkers.
I think orking cows is unacceptable behavior even in California.
Re:Canceled. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if this "manifesto" will do for Google what that sexual harassment post did for Uber.
Re:Canceled. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Canceled. (Score:4, Insightful)
The function of cigarette shaming it to make the filthy smokers keep their goddamn drugs out of air that other people have to breath. Who gives a flying fuck about their health -- that's their own business, and they can kill themselves faster for all I care, so long as they leave me out of it. It's public health that's at stake there.
Somebody being fat, on the other hand, is nobody's business but their own.
Re: (Score:3)
Insulin is driven by blood sugar levels.
Blood sugar levels are driven by carbohydrate intake.
So, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases related to insulin are driven by carbohydrate intake. Pretty simple.
Re: (Score:3)
You should check out this book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book... [goodreads.com]
It's fascinating and pretty much every point he makes is backed by studies (the text is crammed with references). He explains very well the liver thing, it's not a disease, it's a nasty side-effect. When the liver is full of glucose, sugar remains in the bloodstream, which prevents the liver from releasing glucose, etc.
For those too lazy to read, here's the tl;dr: eat less often (low frequency matters more than low calorie), include more dietar
Re: (Score:3)
Cancelling the event is a no-brainer.
Good job missing the point. Not scheduling it the first place is the "no-brainer." Cancelling is what you do when you realize you failed to use your brain.
The powers-that-be at Google are inexplicably oblivious to the nature of the people they've collected and just how much shit they've involuntarily lost since Damore. They scheduled their little "diversity town hall" all unawares that they've populated their company with culture fascists that are perfectly capable of causing an ugly incident. Apparen
Re:Canceled. (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you mean when you say "alt-right"?
Anyone who doesn't sacrifice their common sense at the altar of virtue signaling.
Re:Canceled. (Score:5, Informative)
The alt-right are a self-identifying group who split away from the mainstream right which they felt had become too centrist. They reject most things mainstream, especially the media and current laws on equality and welfare. They want a big reset, a big change in the way society thinks, aka the Red Pill.
The alt-right centres around sites like Breitbart and InfoWars. People like Steve Bannon are considered to be at the forefront of the movement. Sub-groups include the Tea Party and various nationalists.
Wikipeida has a quite detailed article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Count the bumper stickers (Score:4, Interesting)
You want to measure diversity at google? Count the political bumper stickers on the cars that park there. You'll have no problem finding Hillary and Sanders stickers, but Trump stickers are rarer than hen's teeth.
They built this absolutely toxic environment for conservatives under the cover of "diversity". Why should anyone believe they are going to do anything except continue to make conservatives feel like pariahs?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:4, Informative)
Really, have you already forgotten the violence and racism that emerged when Obama was elected?
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundi... [thehill.com]
Kaylon Johnson, an African American campaign worker for Obama, was physically assaulted for wearing an Obama T-shirt in Louisiana following the 2008 election. The three white male attackers shouted "Fuck Obama!" and "N*gger president!" as they broke Johnsonâ(TM)s nose and fractured his eye-socket, requiring surgery.
More frequently, Obamaâ(TM)s presidency was marked by effigies of our first black president hanging from nooses across the country, for example in Kentucky, Washington State, and Maine, or being burned around the world. What Trump supporters fail to remember is that following Obamaâ(TM)s election, property was destroyed across the country, for example in Pennsylvania, Texas, and North Carolina, and a predominately black church was torched in Massachusetts.
(links to coverage of these events are in the article)
Wikipedia has an interesting list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
November 6 - Donald Trump called for protests, based on the mistaken belief that Obama had lost the popular vote when re-elected.
I guess Trump supported protests against himself when he lost the popular vote too.
Re: (Score:3)
Imagine how unchecked they'd be if the elections had gone the other way. From a Wired article, Google had a "call for employees to give each other hugs at an all hands meeting because the wrong candidate won a presidential election in the country."
The WRONG candidate, says the mighty Google.
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:4, Insightful)
The vitriol and violence in the media and by protesters created a culture of shaming Trump supporters, who promptly went turtle to protect themselves. Consequently they ended up undercounted in all the polls, but showed up in the election.
We need to take a lesson from science. When the theory of continental drift was first proposed, geologists initially scoffed at it and dismissed its proponents. But they never ridiculed them, never excluded them from publishing papers. And as more evidence was gathered, the community gradually came around to accept it as correct. Democracy gets it strength from the diversity of viewpoints within its population. This allows us to think up, consider, and try all sorts of different ideas which would never even be suggested in other forms of government. "Shaming" people with unpopular views is detrimental to a functional democracy.
Conservatives, who cares? (Score:3, Informative)
From what I have read this guy sounded more like a moderate and provided long term solutions to the problem, but pointed out short term it isn't really helping things.
Pushing education and activities to get women interested, while at the same time helping employees organize so that more feminine or sociable guys work with more sociable women, while taking note that some people will not be assertive about desiring raises, and thus putting more burden on managers to offer raises/promotions to their employees
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
long term solutions to the problem
What problem? Not enough women in STEM? Why don't we worry as a society about the gender gap in nursing, kindergarten teaching or flight attending? Why don't we talk about the gender gap in the Titanic survivors? Is this really about diversity, or is this just plain feminism (as in promoting the female agenda over the male agenda)?
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I think there's several reasons for a lack of Trump bumper stickers you'd see in Google's parking lot.
1) I think you're right, that conservatives would be afraid (and rightfully so) to show Trump bumper stickers in the Google parking lot for fear of violating the group think.
2) Silicon Valley is pretty left leaning in general, there's just not a whole lot of conservatives in the area.
3) I think having a Trump bumper sticker in the bay area would be a great way to get your car vandalized.
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:5, Funny)
Having any bumper sticker is a great way to get your car vandalized. Bumper stickers -- all of them, in all forms -- are fucking retarded and serve no useful purpose that I've been able to discern.
Re: (Score:3)
#3, Get a 'city car', I recommend POS old Honda, maybe old Toyota 4x4 but those tires are expensive...every keying just adds to 'the patina', rattle can primer is cheap. Trump, MAGA and 'Nuke A Gay Unborn Baby Whale With AIDS For Jesus' bumper stickers on it (plus 'trucknutz', every trigger counts)...and 360 degree cameras. YouTube channel 'Troll Car'? You could put another in someplace like Tulsa, obviously different stickers. Good lul potential on both sides.
Shame them. Don't extort them...have a lawye
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been really vocal about my disappointment in google firing James Damore. Let's use James Damore's words to address what you're saying.
When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions.
In other words, it's possible that the reason there aren't very many conservatives working for google has more to do from the distribution it hires from, than any sort of bigotry. Population density is well correlated with liberalism and Google tends to hire from urban or suburban areas.
I agree they've increased the hostility in the environment, however your hypothesis for why there may be so few Trump supporters in the parking lot is not a slam dunk.
Re: (Score:3)
They built this absolutely toxic environment for conservatives under the cover of "diversity". Why should anyone believe they are going to do anything except continue to make conservatives feel like pariahs?
Sadly, the poor conservatives would never consider collective action like forming a union to object to the man's firing. Instead they whine to the government to protect them, since they believe in government intervention when it's convenient for them.
Re: (Score:3)
make conservatives feel like pariahs
Conservatives are pariahs. You have to be a sociopath to be conservative. They want nothing but conformity, which contributes nothing to any society outside the fascists and nazis. Conservatism must die if humans want to evolve past the talking chimp.
Wait, so conservatives want conformity, yet you want all people to conform to not being conservatives?
Only a Sith deals in absolutes?
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:4, Insightful)
See what happens when a repetitively smart Trump voter outs themselves.
Damore is strongly left-wing, he merely dared to be not orthodox enough.
I'm outright scared by modern US-style politics (most western countries have a variant of this): you see nothing but echo chambers, both left and right wingers carefully avoid places where they could be not in majority. And both positions have became so extreme that applying even basic reason is enough to rip them to shreds -- but either side will instead consider you to be a heretic instead of entertaining the idea that perhaps their religion might be unsound.
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:4, Interesting)
Damore is strongly left-wing
Biological essentialism is not left wing. It's what the left has been fighting against since there was a left, the idea that a person is defined by and the sum of their biology. People of colour's rights, worker's rights, women's rights, disabled rights, transgender rights, all opposed to biological essentialism.
Re: (Score:3)
The preppers worry me, because I've seen them agitate for civil war. I think there's a psychology to dedicating your life to being ready for an event and then dealing with the realization that the event may never come.
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here.
I really wouldn't have wanted Johnson to be President (he's only slightly more competent than Trump), but there was no chance of him winning and I use my vote to signal to both the Republicans and Democrats where they need to shift to get my vote (i.e., towards individual liberty and freedom in all dimensions -- including economic and social). Voting for the (R) or (D) just makes the respective party think you are a reliable (R) or (D) voter and there's no need to change anything.
Of course, I'm in California so it really doesn't matter who I vote for for President -- California will not, in the current environment, ever vote for, and cast all their EC votes for, anything but a Democrat for President. If you vote Democrat, it won't change that. If you vote Republican, it won't change that. If, in some bizarre case, the Democratic candidate was so unappealing (much worse than Hillary) that California actually voted for the Republican candidate, there would have been such a national landslide for the Republican candidate they would win the EC with or without California.
Re:Count the bumper stickers (Score:5, Interesting)
I love it, 'everyone who thinks differently than me isn't intelligent'.
You have just given a near perfect example of at least one of the main points in the memo, that its a different kind of thinking and using polarizing language such as yours is very divisive. If you were 'smarter' maybe you would be able to see that and perhaps even find some common ground. Heck maybe you are even wrong about some of your most closely held beliefs.
Or you can just lump half the country into the 'bad' pile and continue to pretend they are all stupid because they dont think the same as you.
Right /s (Score:5, Insightful)
we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree
Without letting the people who disagree with me talk.
Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching the google execs dance and do dog tricks at the command of this completely intolerant ideology that poses as this loving progressive way of thinking has been really amusing. They are all trying so hard and falling all over themselves to offend the least amount of people as possible. It kinda proves one of the points of that former employee's memo.
What is the point of making sure everybody looks different, when you require them all to be the same person?
Re:Hilarious (Score:4, Informative)
I suspect that the google executives that understand technology (so, likely not VP of HR and the "Chief Diversity Officer") know deep in their hearts that these gender diversity programs are mostly nonsense and unfair to star performers of both genders -- if nothing else, if there is a problem, it's way too late to address the issue in the google workplace as there just are not enough women getting Computer Science degrees to have the "ideal" ratio of male:female developers that mirrors the population as a whole.
This may explain their tin ear on this one -- when you're playing a role for show, you have no internal moral compass to guide you so it's really hard to know what is worthy of firing someone over and what is not.
Anyway, if I was looking at joining a company, the fact that they have honest and analytical employees like James Damore who are willing to point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes would make me more likely to join.
Hundred Flowers Campaign (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure people will feel free to speak out now that someone was fired after speaking out.
Legitimate concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the original manifesto was originally published to a supposedly anonymous internal forum, I think being "outed" publicly is a valid concern for someone who dares to have a different perspective.
I'd probably pass on the Town Hall (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's a mandatory meeting, I'd attend and unless I had another confirmed and accepted job offer elsewhere, I'd keep out of any "discussion" with regards to this topic.
Whenever you're asked for "open and honest" discussion, it's like when someone asks if you're stopped beating your children, a no-win scenario.
All this seems to be a complete distraction from what a job is supposed to be. Somewhere you go to work and make money.
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If it's a mandatory meeting, I'd attend and unless I had another confirmed and accepted job offer elsewhere, I'd keep out of any "discussion" with regards to this topic.
The "one" bad thing on my work record at my current employer (of 15 years) is not attending two "mandatory" meetings.
Both of those meetings were in the month leading up to a unionization vote, were obviously just propaganda to convince people not to vote for unionization, and were held on my days off.
I did vote against unionization. The 3000-ish member department unionized anyways. I got a write-up as thanks.
If a "mandatory meeting" is on my days off or doesnt coincide in some other way with my work
Why the hell do they think it's going to work? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I was a conservative employee at Google, after the last week, I'd keep my mouth shut and look for another job as quickly as possible.
They've shown EXACTLY what they REALLY think about someone asking an honest question.
And no pronouncements or showmanship or promises of safety are going to convince anyone otherwise.
Re:Why the hell do they think it's going to work? (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally agree, the "right to be offended" won out over the "right of free and reasonable speech."
Re:Why the hell do they think it's going to work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you even read the memo?
It's rhetorical, I know you didn't read it, you are just another member of the Internet echo chamber.... Here is some of the horrible inflammatory speech, note the word "p*nis" and biology used repeatedly.
“I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.”
I guess he is right, we can't have an honest discussion or solve any problems.
It is better just not to talk about problems and differences. Just put the metaphorical "I'm offended" beatdown on anyone who steps out of line and fire them. That will solve all the diversity problems.
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You don't have to be a conservative to be in trouble. Not liberal enough, or even attempting to question the PC group think is enough.
Exactly, the author is NOT a conservative. He, as best I can find, identifies as a classical liberal. The left is shooting their own and then wondering why Trump is president.
It's all about the farm team (Score:4, Interesting)
Assumed Guilty until proved innocent (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone should go in there and ask the Question
Googler: "Sundar, Have you stopped abusing your children"
Sundar: "I have never abused my children"
Googler: Thats not the Question i asked. Have you Stopped?
Sundar: I never started
Googler: So you are saying you havn't Stopped?
Sundar: Speechless
Googler : And thats how your Diversity training is run. They assume that the White Male is biased. Well this particular White Male is not biased and feels no need to atone for the sins of others.
Sundar: Has a moment of absolute clarity, resigns from Alphabet and moves to Tibet to study Buddhism. (I wish)
Wait... Google employees worried about privacy? (Score:3)
Google Class Action, Settled Lawsuits. (Score:3)
Almost 300 people join class-action lawsuit for age discrimination at Google [bizjournals.com]. They already settled their first age discrimination lawsuit when Larry Paged fired Brian Reid 9 days before IPO costing Reid 45+ million dollars in stock options. They admitted age discrimination and plants to change it. Yet Google still has an average age of 29.
Then there is the leaked news some googlers and google managers use black lists to block conservatives from joining some teams and promotions.
I wonder if it's because some older engineers might be conservatives.
Summary misrepresents the memo (Score:4, Informative)
lol (Score:3)
Google will now hold several smaller forums "to gather and engage with Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely,"
has left the station as soon as they fired the last person who tried to do what they claim they need to do in low-key, respectful and detached academic manner. This has been a failure of leadership. Given their inability to expand the cloud business (their technology has gotten better, but its adaptation has not) and their failure to grow the Android platform, one has to wonder how will they fuck up next? Fail to produce accurate search results? How about this for a rubicon: fire the CEO for failure.
Google town hall to discuss diversity (Score:5, Funny)
Here's the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
No one's really wrong here. I just think that that's how you get lots of men who feel like they should know the right answer trying to explain what they think women are all going through. They share their ideas about why they think women are probably having trouble getting in the door at computer programming jobs -- based on their own personal experiences as men seeking those same jobs. And since it's so rare -- to suddenly discover one small domain of knowledge which they can never, ever fully experience -- I think people end up taking shortcuts.
It's real and it's big (Score:3, Insightful)
This classmate says he did not view Damore as “some sort of raving sexist or bigot.” But, this classmate adds, “When you’re really smart you’re prone to thinking that you can solve these big issues if you just think re
You don't have free speech at work (Score:5, Insightful)
This Damore fellow seems naive. You don't have free speech at work. Anyone who has been around the block a few times should know that.
I hold some controversial views about politics and society. I don't talk about them at work. I keep conversation with my colleagues limited to the work we are doing and maybe the weather and what I did over the weekend. Even then, they get a sanitized version of my weekend. Management is going to do what they're going to do, and likely don't give a fuck what I think. Sure, I'll make suggestions in the proper setting if I think something can be done better. But as a Systems Admin I'm not going to weigh in, uninvited, on the company's hiring policies; especially about something as contentious and politically charged as women's aptitude for engineering.
I'm not sure this guy should have been fired. But the fact is he stuck his head up and it got lopped off. Companies have cultures. Not everyone if a fit for every culture, and the culture is likely not going to change just for you. Don't like it? Don't work for Google. I have refused job offers because the people at the company seemed like dicks. Damore should just move on. He won't have free speech ant his next job either.
Re:Look, women are fine at engineering (Score:5, Informative)
Fun Fact, I'm at one of the world's best universities,
Yes, a university whose primary attendee is essentially defined by their position outside of the norm (i.e. the top x% of learners) is an ideal sample for guaging the average characteristics of the groups they fall within. /s
Nobody reasonable is claiming that individual women are incapable of excelling in STEM. The document that started this whole thing sought to explain the current status quo based on average characteristics of a group. You and most of the students around you are outliers and do not represent the mean.
The author of the document is arguing that the WAY we're trying to achieve diversity amounts to brute force and that we need to re-examine our approach, as well as examine our understanding of what constitutes a successfully diverse environment.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Look, women are fine at engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Look, women are fine at engineering (Score:4, Informative)
University of Wisconsin, engineering school graduate gender breakdown. 2014 only year provided. From https://ecs.engr.wisc.edu/publ... [wisc.edu]
BS: male 467, female 115
MS: male 265, female 86
PhD: male 63, female 21
Bullshit on you. Also more than half as many MS grads as BS?...something fishy. Are they making Master's degrees cheap in terms of time and money? One year?
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I think he is from University of Waterloo in Canada. Here is the statistics https://uwaterloo.ca/engineeri... [uwaterloo.ca]
Women in Engineering 2016
Women in Engineering # Women % Women
Undergraduate Year One Enrollment 504 29.2%
All Undergraduate Students 1833 25.2%
Undergraduate Degrees Awarded 211 18.6%
All Graduate Students 447 26%
Graduate Degrees Granted 139 23.1%
PhD Degrees Granted 30 20.8%
Professors 49 16.8%
Great university btw
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the fact you think Canada has fought air wars this century proves how deep your delusion is
You've never heard of air hockey?
Re:Biology is the programming of all living creatu (Score:5, Insightful)
Two words you need to learn: statistical dispersion.
For the sake of argument let's take "manliness" and "womanliness" as givens, and not some kind of social construct. Not all men are equally manly; some are very manly and some are sissies. Likewise for women -- not all women are equally "womanly".
So you have two population bell-curves, and the curves overlap. That is to say some women are more manly than some men. Everybody knows this, and yet somehow they talk as if all men were identically masculine and all women were identically feminine.
What does this has to do with engineering? Not much. Different types of engineering have different requirements. Women as a population tend to have slightly better verbal reasoning skills and men as a population tend to have slightly better spatial reasoning. So you'd expect women to do better, say, as software engineers; and men to do better as mechanical engineers.
However the small population differences in ability are dwarfed by individual variability. There are men with extremely formidable verbal reasoning skills, and women with astonishing spatial reasoning skills. Case in point: when I was at MIT I knew a woman who got her PhD in EE and was the first person to figure out how to fold a stellated icosahedron in origami [google.com]. I don't care if you are a man, even a manly man, it's a safe bet that her right brain could kick your right brain's ass.
And that's OK. It doesn't make you less of a man; it means you have to judge people as individuals.
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Spare me 'rockstars', competent and responsible is tough to find.
Competent and responsible females have been some of the worst job hoppers I've ever worked with. They know they can get away with murder and still get a fat raise, then leverage that for another with the next job hop.
I've never had an female pass the 'tell me about your first real programmable computer?' interview question. It's supposed to be an opportunity to explain where your love for computers comes from. Works, even if the honest an
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women have had freedom of choice to select any professional, educational opportunity etc. that they have wanted for 40 years (give or take)
No, they haven't been free to choose. That's the point. When you assume there is no discrimination, then the conclusion is there is no discrimination. When you assume nothing, there's an obvious gender gap. It could be discrimination, or something else.
Only when you are a sexist bigot and assume no sexism is it obviously not sexism. I don't make that assumption, so I don't come to the same conclusion as you.
are you stumping around for women in those professions to change their behavior? To make those professions more 'inviting' to men? If not why not?
Yes. There's sexism on both sides. And, ironically, the sexism in nursing is from men. I hav
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This is truly a fire-able offense. Check the DO NOT REHIRE, box on this guy.
He'll never have to work again. They seem to have violated California law and since they don't record their diversity seminars while they record all other meetings, they may have violated federal whistleblower statutes.
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Wait, you think a corporate workplace is for you to "discuss the issues we want to discuss"?
Well, the author of the memo got that idea from the meetings he was dragged into to discuss the need for diversity. He was presented with statements and then he researched and produced a document showing that those statements didn't hold up. For doing such research and sharing it privately with people who call themselves "skeptics" at Google (presumably because they enjoy poking holes and correcting less-than-fully-rigorous conceptions), he was publicly exposed and summarily fired without cause (well, he
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When Google starts to fire managers that blacklist employees and backs their policies that espouse diversity with action they will start to regain credibility.
This.
Since I can't mod you up I'll quote you for visibility.