Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo on Gender Differences

[Shodan]

Nothing says respect for diversity of viewpoint like firing someone for expressing a different viewpoint.

Regards,
Shodan

[snowthx]

I agree with the firing, and any company I’ve worked with would do the same for such dickish behavior.

I will say it sounds like he felt disenfranchised by Google’s diversity programs, and if he is not a woman, LGBT, Latino, Asian, Black, etc., I can see how he felt ignored. Does not give him permission to do what he did, though.

[iiandyiiii]

@Shodan

Nothing says respect for diversity of viewpoint like firing someone for expressing a different viewpoint.

Regards,
Shodan

Depends on the viewpoint. Hopefully you’d fire someone if (as an example) they sent out a mass message to employees (or posted publicly on the employee forum) about how black people were inferior and should only be hired for menial jobs.

Opinions might differ on which viewpoints should warrant firing.

[Aspidistra]

@Dr.Strangelove

Tech may be the T in STEM, but they aren’t the same (neither is science and STEM, which the article seems to confuse). Whatever general trends there are that discourage women from going into STEM careers seem to be greatly amplified in tech (and relatively lower in science and medicine).

I’m all for “plugging leaks”, so to speak, but I’m unconvinced that Calc I is some kind of critical barrier. Subjective notions like “confidence” are notoriously hard to measure, anyway; the stereotypical boy is prone to exaggeration and might overstate his real self-confidence, even on a survey. Confidence-building measures might help boys and girls equally, still leaving a gap.

Related article regarding the confidence issue - this does seem to be a repeatably measurable effect. Girls have less confidence in their abilities than boys, even where objective measurement shows their skills to be the same.

Of course this is a big problem in modern workplace culture where workers are encouraged to self-evaluate as part of their yearly performance evaluation (I always heartily loathed that process myself). When you know that there’s a systemic gender difference in how men and women perceive their own abilities, that’s just an obvious recipe for pay and opportunity imbalances

It could be that what both sexes need is not so much “more confidence” as “more realistic self-evaluation”. The dangers caused by under-evaluating and over-evaluating may be different (under-evaluating - you’ll deliberately under-perform so as not to fail: over-evaluating - you’l bite off more than you can chew and have a complete disaster) but neither is actually a good thing.

[Hector_St_Clare]

@asahi

I have no idea what the culture is like inside the tech field but this entire episode leads me to believe it’s every bit as male dominated, if not borderline chauvinistic, as Ellen Pao and other women have been saying. And I’m not normally one who just accepts charges of bias at face value - I usually wanna see proof. But it just struck me that a Google employee (presumably a pretty sharp individual) somehow thought that it was within the boundaries of normal office discourse to share a rant that was predictably not well received by at least half of its recipients. Moreover, apparently he had has supporters. I can’t imagine some Wall Street executive doing something like this and expecting to open some sort of dialog on the subjects presented therein. It strikes me as real insularity and blindness to the very issues about which he was writing.

Where is the evidence that ‘half of its recipients’ didn’t receive his essay well?

The memo reads to me as both 1) fairly clearly correct on the merits (the reason for differences in gender representation in particular fields is probably due to well documented innate differences in interests and talents, and in an ideal world there would probably be fewer women computer scientists, engineers, politicians etc. than there are today), and 2) written in a fairly anodyne and polite fashion.

Google was well within their rights to fire anyone they choose, but the fact that he was fired for it does indicate that a good part of what he was saying was correct: there are ideas that our economic, political and cultural elites don’t especially want to hear voiced.

[madmonk28]

@Shodan

Nothing says respect for diversity of viewpoint like firing someone for expressing a different viewpoint.

Regards,
Shodan

To be clear, in this case expressing a different viewpoint meant writing a ten page document on why the company’s policies suck and then sending out to everyone.

[Hector_St_Clare]

@Punoqllads

In 4th grade 2/3 of both girls and boys are interested in science. By 12th grade 60% of girls and 70% of boys are still interested in science. After Calc I in college, however, 30% of men and 20% of women are still interested in following a science track, even though a 2015 study indicates that women outperform men in Calc I.

Cite with hyperlinks to supporting documentation.

How does this in any way demonstrate discrimination, rather innate biological differences?

As we get older, 1) sexual differentiation becomes more distinct, and 2) the effects of childhood cultural conditioning become less important, so it’s precisely among 19 year olds (rather than among 9 year olds) where you would expect to find innate biological differences between men and women present themselves more clearly.

Anyway the fact that gender differences in interests are the widest in more gender-equal societies kind of underscores that discrimination is not the answer here.

[iiandyiiii]

@Hector_St_Clare

Where is the evidence that ‘half of its recipients’ didn’t receive his essay well?

The memo reads to me as both 1) fairly clearly correct on the merits (the reason for differences in gender representation in particular fields is probably due to well documented innate differences in interests and talents, and in an ideal world there would probably be fewer women computer scientists, engineers, politicians etc. than there are today), and 2) written in a fairly anodyne and polite fashion.

Google was well within their rights to fire anyone they choose, but the fact that he was fired for it does indicate that a good part of what he was saying was correct: there are ideas that our economic, political and cultural elites don’t especially want to hear voiced.

It’s laughable that it’s “fairly clearly correct on the merits”. There’s no reason to believe that all or most or even any significant portion of these disparities are driven by biology rather than culture and society.

[wonky]

@iiandyiiii

It’s laughable that it’s “fairly clearly correct on the merits”. There’s no reason to believe that all or most or even any significant portion of these disparities are driven by biology rather than culture and society.

Sure there’s reason for people to believe it. They want to believe it, so they believe it.

[Chronos]

The fact is, nobody knows what the cause of the disparity is, and a lot of people would really love to find out, because if we did, we could maybe increase the number of people going into STEM fields, and not lose people (of both genders) who have the aptitude to be very good at it. But memos like this don’t bring us any closer to true understanding, and in fact hinder efforts at gaining that true understanding.

And if he had posted this on his personal blog, I doubt that there would have been any problems at all. But what you do on company time using company resources is absolutely the company’s business, and if what you do on their time using their resources is awkward or embarrassing for them, yes, they can fire you.

[pulykamell]

@Shodan

Nothing says respect for diversity of viewpoint like firing someone for expressing a different viewpoint.

Regards,
Shodan

Yeah, why don’t you send out a ten page missive to all your coworkers sharply criticizing your employer and let me know how that works out for you.

[Ale]

@Dr.Strangelove

Tech may be the T in STEM, but they aren’t the same (neither is science and STEM, which the article seems to confuse). Whatever general trends there are that discourage women from going into STEM careers seem to be greatly amplified in tech (and relatively lower in science and medicine).

I’m all for “plugging leaks”, so to speak, but I’m unconvinced that Calc I is some kind of critical barrier. Subjective notions like “confidence” are notoriously hard to measure, anyway; the stereotypical boy is prone to exaggeration and might overstate his real self-confidence, even on a survey. Confidence-building measures might help boys and girls equally, still leaving a gap.

Leaving gender aside, my experience is that the best techies are self-motivated tinkerers. School was a help, but mostly to round out the education. There was no need for educators to encourage interest in programming or whatever since the interested kids were already doing it on their own.

Maybe young girls need higher exposure to tech-related stuff, like computers, electronics kits, etc. There could very well be gender bias in this regard. My friends with kids say that they try, but the girls just aren’t as interested in that kind of stuff. I don’t have an answer there.

In the absence of a definitive answer I think a good working model would be to stop shoehorning human nature into an ideological construct, because short of mandatory hormone therapy for everyone I don’t see how it can we even entertain the idea that men and women should, nay, must have an exact 50-50 representation among different fields of activity.

[you_with_the_face]

My guess is that the type of person who would write a completely unsolicited, 10-page treatise on such a controversial topic and post it with the expectation that Google execs would somehow not be embarrassed by it, is the type of person that probably does other stupid, arrogant things. Like dominate meetings with pontifications no one else cares about.

If the totality of all of these stupid, arrogant things is outweighed by his productivity and value to Google, then he probably wouldn’t have been fired.

So I assume he was fired because the above equation didn’t come out in his favor.

[Ravenman]

@Hector_St_Clare

The memo reads to me as both 1) fairly clearly correct on the merits (the reason for differences in gender representation in particular fields is probably due to well documented innate differences in interests and talents, and in an ideal world there would probably be fewer women computer scientists, engineers, politicians etc. than there are today)…

Uh, what? Are you saying women are somehow being tricked or compelled into seeking jobs in tech and politics?

[CandidGamera]

This is the textbook definition of creating a hostile work environment for your co-workers. Wholeheartedly approve the firing, genuinely puzzled as to why anyone would support this nut’s actions.

Hell, I think sending out something to the entire company about your child selling band candy should be a fire-able offense.

[Aspidistra]

@you_with_the_face

My guess is that the type of person who would write a completely unsolicited, 10-page treatise on such a controversial topic and post it with the expectation that Google execs would somehow not be embarrassed by it, is the type of person that probably does other stupid, arrogant things. Like dominate meetings with pontifications no one else cares about.

The supreme irony here being, of course, if he’d had a bit more of those feminine soft skills he might have had the social skills to figure out that he was being a dick. Apparently success in the workplace is more than being able to sit at your desk for eight hours and churn out code. Who knew techying could be so hard, right?

[Acsenray]

Posted on Reddit —

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6sa7w9/google_fires_employee_behind_controversial/

Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. Solitary work is something that only happens at the most junior levels, and even then it’s only possible because someone senior to you — most likely your manager — has been putting in long hours to build up the social structures in your group that let you focus on code.

And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.

[you_with_the_face]

@Aspidistra

The supreme irony here being, of course, if he’d had a bit more of those feminine soft skills he might have had the social skills to figure out that he was being a dick. Apparently success in the workplace is more than being able to sit at your desk for eight hours and churn out code. Who knew techying could be so hard, right?

Yeah, it almost makes you wonder if that what Google was actually referring to when they fired him for “perpetuating gender stereotypes”. Like, dude, what a great way to reinforce the idea that male coders have low EQ.

[pulykamell]

@CandidGamera

This is the textbook definition of creating a hostile work environment for your co-workers. Wholeheartedly approve the firing, genuinely puzzled as to why anyone would support this nut’s actions.

Because of addlepated logic like “if you’re a tolerant workplace you have to tolerate intolerance you stupid hypocrites” or some such horseshit thinking. I don’t even care about the specific contents of the letter. Sending ten pages of unsolicited crap to your coworkers should at least be met with a stern rebuke, and criticizing your employer, for whatever reason, in that email is just a dumb-as-a-rock move that should not surprise anyone led to a firing.

[Clothahump]

@PastTense

I disagree with the firing. While it would be appropriate to fire him if in fact he did behave badly toward female colleagues, this was not the case–instead he was fired just because he expressed an opinion.

Agreed. I hope he takes Google to the cleaners in the upcoming lawsuit that I’m sure he will file.