Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber [UPDATE] Author Fired

[Taf the Ghost]

Bell Curves? Ah, yes, Bell Curves.  Haha.

 

There are IQ differences on the mass scale, and they matter. The difference is not just Average ability but also the Variance of the traits. There are significant differences in the amount of time a Man will invest in a work field over a Woman. There is a massive physical strength & endurance difference between Men & Women. 

 

None of this is news. At Google's rough skill level, in the technical departments, they should be anywhere from 80-90% Male, possibly higher. So what the original memo writer is dealing with is outright, and actually illegal, discrimination against him for his abilities simply because he would be a White Male. We're just not "allowed" to point out that "anti-discrimination" has always been code for "discriminate against the competent". 

 

Or, if you really want to drive home the point of "where this is all going", let me put it this way: This is why Trump won. This is why Google is on a censorship movement to prevent "bad thought" from breaking out. You can only deny reality for so long before people start responding. The current responses are civil. What comes next will be much less so.  But at least we know for sure that Google is working very hard to get itself written in Economic History books as the "biggest company to throw it all away". 

 

If Google's leadership is smart, they'll pay the guy 8 figures to retire somewhere warm and fund some startup he wants to do. Otherwise the responses from inside Google have proven his points and Google is going to get lit up with lawsuits. There's also a little issue that it's now the Trump Administration's EEOC. Plus, since Google is so important (#1 website in the world), why shouldn't it be treated as a Public Utility? It clearly already operates with more power than the local electric company.

[Mihle]

People should be hired and paid 100% based on how good they are, even if that means for example that a company have more male engineers while more female marketing people.

[AshleyAshes]

2 hours ago, Mihle said:

and paid 100% based on how good they are

Well, let's not be delusional here.  The vast majority of employers prefer the idea of 'Paid 100% based on as low as the employee is willing to accept.'

 

This is also why employers greatly discourage discussion of wages between employees.  Because if you found out that someone next you is being paid more for the same job, you might do something dangerous and crazy... Like demand to get paid that much money too.

[Commodus]

3 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Bell Curves? Ah, yes, Bell Curves.  Haha.

 

There are IQ differences on the mass scale, and they matter. The difference is not just Average ability but also the Variance of the traits. There are significant differences in the amount of time a Man will invest in a work field over a Woman. There is a massive physical strength & endurance difference between Men & Women. 

 

None of this is news. At Google's rough skill level, in the technical departments, they should be anywhere from 80-90% Male, possibly higher. So what the original memo writer is dealing with is outright, and actually illegal, discrimination against him for his abilities simply because he would be a White Male. We're just not "allowed" to point out that "anti-discrimination" has always been code for "discriminate against the competent". 

 

Or, if you really want to drive home the point of "where this is all going", let me put it this way: This is why Trump won. This is why Google is on a censorship movement to prevent "bad thought" from breaking out. You can only deny reality for so long before people start responding. The current responses are civil. What comes next will be much less so.  But at least we know for sure that Google is working very hard to get itself written in Economic History books as the "biggest company to throw it all away". 

 

If Google's leadership is smart, they'll pay the guy 8 figures to retire somewhere warm and fund some startup he wants to do. Otherwise the responses from inside Google have proven his points and Google is going to get lit up with lawsuits. There's also a little issue that it's now the Trump Administration's EEOC. Plus, since Google is so important (#1 website in the world), why shouldn't it be treated as a Public Utility? It clearly already operates with more power than the local electric company.

A lot of non-physical ability is learned and not an inherent trait.  There are plenty of good women programmers, and they often don't show up because people like you try to scare them away from the field.  And that's really the big beef with this Googler's views: he's arguing that women are biologically ill-suited to being programmers, which is an utterly unsupported claim.

 

Also... you're living in a fantasy land.  You really think Google is going to "throw it all away" because it dared suggest that fighting discrimination and being more inclusive are good ideas?  No, it's not.  The vast majority of its employees support its views, there's no indications of near-term financial trouble, and if Google decides to fire this man it'll be completely justified -- his views directly damage his ability to work with women.  The boring reality: Google will keep doing what it's doing, it'll get plenty of competent women and minority engineers, and life will go on.

 

(PS: you do realize that you effectively implied that all non-white, non-male people are incompetent, right?)

 

 

[Memories4K]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

A lot of non-physical ability is learned and not an inherent trait.  There are plenty of good women programmers, and they often don't show up because people like you try to scare them away from the field.  And that's really the big beef with this Googler's views: he's arguing that women are biologically ill-suited to being programmers, which is an utterly unsupported claim.

 

Also... you're living in a fantasy land.  You really think Google is going to "throw it all away" because it dared suggest that fighting discrimination and being more inclusive are good ideas?  No, it's not.  The vast majority of its employees support its views, there's no indications of near-term financial trouble, and if Google decides to fire this man it'll be completely justified -- his views directly damage his ability to work with women.  The boring reality: Google will keep doing what it's doing, it'll get plenty of competent women and minority engineers, and life will go on.

 

(PS: you do realize that you effectively implied that all non-white, non-male people are incompetent, right?)

 

 

Where did you read where he said women are biologically ill-suited to be programmers? The part i read was only talking about behavior and how women naturally seem to be more agreeable so they negotiate salary far less often as men.
Also, he didn't imply that non-white/non-male people are incompetent, he implied that such a policy based on "diversity" and quota-filling for image hurts a company's efficiency and quality because they are now looking at hiring candidates based on race/sex, whereas an actual non-discriminatory policy would not even consider these traits as valuable in the workplace at all.

Let's reverse the roles here, i go apply at some store for a managerial position. I'm an Indigenous-American man, i am competing with some other white dude for the same position. I have 10 years experience with management in various establishments and a clean record. White dude has 2 years experience at his local McDonald's and a clean record. Both asking for the same salary. The white dude gets the job. I'm told by owner that i'm simply "not what they're looking for" as they would prefer a "white man". I am clearly better fit for the job, i'm not more expensive, i'm not anymore a danger to the workplace environment, but because i'm not as valuable a hire as a white dude simply because of their race i will not be getting the job for the managerial position at my local Klu Klux Klan's import/export business. (Disregard the fact that if i can prove it was discrimination based on race/sex, i would be rolling in $$$)

The point is if it's wrong to discriminate based on race/sex in the same context but with the roles reversed it's not wrong, what does that really say? I hear shit all the time about how "diversity" is great and how "we should help the minorities" but that's fucked, i don't want people to see me as a minority to help or hurt their company. We're not all the same. We're all individuals. Tony from down the street, who's of African descent, who gets a great job does not mean i get a great job. Laura from another town, who's of Asian descent, and gets a great job does not mean i get a great job. Marco my neighbor, who's also indigenous, gets a great job but that does not mean i get a great job. It's not a win for me just because i'm getting grouped with these other people, you're not "uplifting minorities" by treating me differently than someone else based on race/sex when it shouldn't be relevant, you're not making your workplace more diverse by choosing me to work there just because of my skintone and physical racial traits when i grew up in the exact same modern American culture that everybody else in the area also grew up in. We're not talking diversity of the mind, of career-field experience, of ability, so what diversity is there really?

That's what i keep thinking when i see policies and issues like this and i believe many others who have concerns with policies like this might also think.

If you as an employer can find somebody of the same or greater quality for your business as the current lead of your employees then that's great and i believe that as an employer you should be looking for just that; the best you can get for the job, which means not discriminating based on race/sex.

[potoooooooo]

39 minutes ago, Memories4K said:

Where did you read where he said women are biologically ill-suited to be programmers? 

He literally said a group of the best programmers should be 80-90% men.

 

Not would be, SHOULD be.

[Brooksie359]

17 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

You are going to have to present me with some pretty serious (and supported) research before you expect me to accept that there is a physiological difference big enough to  warrant a noticeable imbalance between men and woman employed within an academic corporation.

 

Arguable at absolute best there is a 3-4 point difference in IQ specifically relating to math, language and reasoning in favor of men, but that g (general intelligence) is not different and not the cause.  If you make all other aspects equal then you should see less than 3% bias in gender employment.  There are no other gender specific differences.

 

 

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289605000851?via%3Dihub

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289605000887?via%3Dihub

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/000712605X53542/abstract;jsessionid=C6D7A4E80B7C2B25F2C734025D4B28E5.f03t01

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188690300480X?via%3Dihub

 

Don't want to read all the studies, here's the conclusion:

 

Yes there's is a difference, but it's nowhere near big enough to make a lick of difference.

 

While this may be true I would have to say as someone who has seen the representation of females in stem programs at a college level there is a clear reason why women are underrepresented in alot of stem fields. The cause of this is unknown to me but it would make sense to have females underrepresented in a field that less females go into compared to men.

[Misanthrope]

37 minutes ago, potoooooooo said:

He literally said a group of the best programmers should be 80-90% men.

 

Not would be, SHOULD be.

As I said it was worded incredibly poorly. But if you look at the context of this, an HR memo on a company relating to hiring practices, is not hard to extrapolate that behind the shitlord bullshit, he meant it's hard to pick more than 20% of women when the available pool of candidates for this positions is 80% male: you will end up with worst candidates and employees and fairly quickly at that. The problem is compounded if you also look at internal promotions when you also demotivate your talent by promoting the already on average worst candidates ahead of them because of their fish taco instead of their coding talent.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, Memories4K said:

Where did you read where he said women are biologically ill-suited to be programmers? The part i read was only talking about behavior and how women naturally seem to be more agreeable so they negotiate salary far less often as men.
Also, he didn't imply that non-white/non-male people are incompetent, he implied that such a policy based on "diversity" and quota-filling for image hurts a company's efficiency and quality because they are now looking at hiring candidates based on race/sex, whereas an actual non-discriminatory policy would not even consider these traits as valuable in the workplace at all.

Let's reverse the roles here, i go apply at some store for a managerial position. I'm an Indigenous-American man, i am competing with some other white dude for the same position. I have 10 years experience with management in various establishments and a clean record. White dude has 2 years experience at his local McDonald's and a clean record. Both asking for the same salary. The white dude gets the job. I'm told by owner that i'm simply "not what they're looking for" as they would prefer a "white man". I am clearly better fit for the job, i'm not more expensive, i'm not anymore a danger to the workplace environment, but because i'm not as valuable a hire as a white dude simply because of their race i will not be getting the job for the managerial position at my local Klu Klux Klan's import/export business. (Disregard the fact that if i can prove it was discrimination based on race/sex, i would be rolling in $$$)

The point is if it's wrong to discriminate based on race/sex in the same context but with the roles reversed it's not wrong, what does that really say? I hear shit all the time about how "diversity" is great and how "we should help the minorities" but that's fucked, i don't want people to see me as a minority to help or hurt their company. We're not all the same. We're all individuals. Tony from down the street, who's of African descent, who gets a great job does not mean i get a great job. Laura from another town, who's of Asian descent, and gets a great job does not mean i get a great job. Marco my neighbor, who's also indigenous, gets a great job but that does not mean i get a great job. It's not a win for me just because i'm getting grouped with these other people, you're not "uplifting minorities" by treating me differently than someone else based on race/sex when it shouldn't be relevant, you're not making your workplace more diverse by choosing me to work there just because of my skintone and physical racial traits when i grew up in the exact same modern American culture that everybody else in the area also grew up in. We're not talking diversity of the mind, of career-field experience, of ability, so what diversity is there really?

That's what i keep thinking when i see policies and issues like this and i believe many others who have concerns with policies like this might also think.

If you as an employer can find somebody of the same or greater quality for your business as the current lead of your employees then that's great and i believe that as an employer you should be looking for just that; the best you can get for the job, which means not discriminating based on race/sex.

Two problems:

 

First, you're creating a false dichotomy that assumes the women or minorities being hired are significantly less qualified.  In general, Google and other tech companies aren't hiring people with dramatically inferior skill sets, if they're inferior at all -- it's usually a question of minor differences.  You're betraying your bias by implying that when there is a difference, it's a huge one.  There's also the problem of assuming that diversity is a zero sum game where one culture must lose for another to win, but that's another story.

 

The other issue is that you're asserting that only technical aptitude matters.  Many white guys masturbate to cries of "candidates should be chosen solely on merit," but they completely gloss over the merits of a heterogenous work culture.  Women and minorities may not only approach an issue differently, but will think about social issues that a privileged white man might not consider.  Look at ridesharing for example: women have to deal with sexual harassment that men don't usually face, and there are studies showing that there are racist ridesharing drivers who'll intentionally cancel rides based on passengers' profiles.  If you're a white guy who can always hail a car and never has a driver make gross comments about your body, are you going to design a ridesharing app with these issues in mind?  Probably not.

 

That's the point.  It's not really about hitting arbitrary quotas, it's about giving cultures better representation and taking their perspectives into account.  You're not going to get that if you allow a self-reinforcing cycle where white men hire more white men (or in Google's case, white and Asian men).

[Misanthrope]

8 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Two problems:

 

First, you're creating a false dichotomy that assumes the women or minorities being hired are significantly less qualified.  In general, Google and other tech companies aren't hiring people with dramatically inferior skill sets, if they're inferior at all -- it's usually a question of minor differences.  You're betraying your bias by implying that when there is a difference, it's a huge one.  There's also the problem of assuming that diversity is a zero sum game where one culture must lose for another to win, but that's another story.

 

The other issue is that you're asserting that only technical aptitude matters.  Many white guys masturbate to cries of "candidates should be chosen solely on merit," but they completely gloss over the merits of a heterogenous work culture.  Women and minorities may not only approach an issue differently, but will think about social issues that a privileged white man might not consider.  Look at ridesharing for example: women have to deal with sexual harassment that men don't usually face, and there are studies showing that there are racist ridesharing drivers who'll intentionally cancel rides based on passengers' profiles.  If you're a white guy who can always hail a car and never has a driver make gross comments about your body, are you going to design a ridesharing app with these issues in mind?  Probably not.

That's not so much a false dichotomy but a Straw man on your part:

 

When we talk hiring practices we talk about statistical overall numbers. It is perfectly possible to find qualified candidates among both men and women since this numbers are just statistical in nature and we know most people are distributed along a wide spectrum of skills and aptitudes needed for the positions. The point isn't to discriminate women or minorities from the positions, the point is that if there's not enough technically qualified people applying (because there's not enough people learning this technical qualifications) then enforcing an unrealistic standard of 50% men 50% women will mean worst candidates overall, as in the statistic. This does not negates in any way the possibility of finding perfectly qualified women to fulfill the roles needed. It would just naturally be around 15 to 20% of the time if you take into account the cited numbers of 15 to 20% of the people that even apply for the job being women.

 

Second, when we talk about merit we also include soft skills, interpersonal abilities, etc. As part of the merits since while women overall exceed at this areas over men, it does not means men are incapable of displaying merit in these areas as well. Thinking that saying "Hire based on merit" we only mean technical ability is your biggest straw man here: Nobody is saying that. Of course non-technical skills for certain positions are important, even extremely important too.

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Two problems:

 

First, you're creating a false dichotomy that assumes the women or minorities being hired are significantly less qualified.  In general, Google and other tech companies aren't hiring people with dramatically inferior skill sets, if they're inferior at all -- it's usually a question of minor differences.  You're betraying your bias by implying that when there is a difference, it's a huge one.  There's also the problem of assuming that diversity is a zero sum game where one culture must lose for another to win, but that's another story.

 

The other issue is that you're asserting that only technical aptitude matters.  Many white guys masturbate to cries of "candidates should be chosen solely on merit," but they completely gloss over the merits of a heterogenous work culture.  Women and minorities may not only approach an issue differently, but will think about social issues that a privileged white man might not consider.  Look at ridesharing for example: women have to deal with sexual harassment that men don't usually face, and there are studies showing that there are racist ridesharing drivers who'll intentionally cancel rides based on passengers' profiles.  If you're a white guy who can always hail a car and never has a driver make gross comments about your body, are you going to design a ridesharing app with these issues in mind?  Probably not.

Ok so if the situation was the opposite and white males were underrepresented in a work force would you advocate hiring white males over other groups even if the person from the other group is more qualified? And let's be honest here about the size of the female population in the stem feild. It is quite small compared to men and so if there are a large proportion of women in a work place chances are men that were more qualified didn't get the job based on discrimination. 

[AshleyAshes]

20 minutes ago, Commodus said:

The other issue is that you're asserting that only technical aptitude matters.  Many white guys masturbate to cries of "candidates should be chosen solely on merit," but they completely gloss over the merits of a heterogenous work culture.  Women and minorities may not only approach an issue differently, but will think about social issues that a privileged white man might not consider.

Working in an actual office where we work on visual effects, I can only echo this.  Firstly, and this is important, there are very few like 'Ultimate Employees' who are good at everything.  You might as well be trying to hire unicorns.  ...Not that you should look a unicorn in the mouth should it walk into the office.

We don't just need 'great visual effects artists'.  We need a lot of things.  We need artists.  We need people who can manage teams of artists.  We need people who can invent new techniques or scramble three techniques into one new variant technique.  We need people who can teach techniques to other people.  (Don't tell me that you never met someone who 'knew their shit' but could explain it to others about as well as a Golden Retriever could.)  We need people who can keep other people collaborating with others.  We need people who can solve problems.  Problem solving isn't even 'one skill'.  Some may be able to solve some problems, but others normally take a whole fully different approach to solving problems and can solve different problems.

 

Assuming an employer only needs the 'best' while imagining a carbon copy clone army is like saying that a box of lego should only have 'the best pieces'.  You rarely need just 'the best pieces', you need every kind of piece possible because they can fit together in more and more ways.  And when you start stacking your lego box with only specific pieces you start limiting what you can build even if you can't see it happening.

[Commodus]

8 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Ok so if the situation was the opposite and white males were underrepresented in a work force would you advocate hiring white males over other groups even if the person from the other group is more qualified? And let's be honest here about the size of the female population in the stem feild. It is quite small compared to men and so if there are a large proportion of women in a work place chances are men that were more qualified didn't get the job based on discrimination. 

If that were true, and only if the qualification differences were reasonably small enough, then yes.  But it's not the world we live in; the world we live in shows that white men have disproportionate representation in tech and tend to prefer hiring more white men, even if it's an unconscious preference.

 

And that last part is pure speculation.  You're literally claiming that it's very unlikely women with stronger-than-usual representation in a STEM-oriented field got their on their own merits.  No, it can't just be the particular culture of that company or a matter of circumstances, it's that they 'stole' jobs from men.

[Misanthrope]

Just now, Commodus said:

If that were true, and only if the qualification differences were reasonably small enough, then yes.  But it's not the world we live in; the world we live in shows that white men tend to prefer hiring more white men, even if it's an unconscious preference.

Hold that thought.

 

Quote

And that last part is pure speculation.  You're literally claiming that it's very unlikely women with stronger-than-usual representation in a STEM-oriented field got their on their own merits.  No, it can't just be the particular culture of that company or a matter of circumstances, it's that they 'stole' jobs from men.

 

You're really going to call it pure speculation immediately after telling us about an unconscious preference?

[Brooksie359]

Just now, Commodus said:

If that were true, and only if the qualification differences were reasonably small enough, then yes.  But it's not the world we live in; the world we live in shows that white men tend to prefer hiring more white men, even if it's an unconscious preference.

 

And that last part is pure speculation.  You're literally claiming that it's very unlikely women with stronger-than-usual representation in a STEM-oriented field got their on their own merits.  No, it can't just be the particular culture of that company or a matter of circumstances, it's that they 'stole' jobs from men.

you have a small percentage of females going into the stem field and then you have a large percentage of females in your workplace. this would imply that you are giving them the job based on gender to get to that large percentage. I am not saying that there aren't many qualified women in stem I am just saying that there are less qualified women than men purely because there are more men in the stem field. now if you were to look at the percentage of qualified women of the women in the stem field compared to the percentage of qualified men of the men in the stem field the percentage is very likely the same. this would mean women are just as capable as men in the stem field but not as many women decide to go into the stem field.

[Commodus]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

Hold that thought.

 

 

You're really going to call it pure speculation immediately after telling us about an unconscious preference?

Yes, I am.  There's no contradiction here.

 

It's demonstrably true that people tend to hire from their own cultural circles if they aren't conscious of their choices, and in the US tech industry, that usually means white men.  They may not be explicitly racist, but presented with the choice between a white man and a woman or minority of roughly similar ability, guess who's more likely to get in the door?

 

Pure speculation is creating a society that doesn't and might never exist, and then basing a key part of your argument around that.  As soon as white men are a minority in tech and regularly face discrimination or harassment when they do get in, let me know.

 

[Misanthrope]

11 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Yes, I am.  There's no contradiction here.

 

It's demonstrably true that people tend to hire from their own cultural circles if they aren't conscious of their choices, and in the US tech industry, that usually means white men.  They may not be explicitly racist, but presented with the choice between a white man and a woman or minority of roughly similar ability, guess who's more likely to get in the door?

 

Pure speculation is creating a society that doesn't and might never exist, and then basing a key part of your argument around that.  As soon as white men are a minority in tech and regularly face discrimination or harassment when they do get in, let me know.

 

You cannot demonstrate an unconscious bias without subjecting all of your test subjects to a psychological analysis on all of the cases or a statistically significant sample at least. You can speculate based on tendencies sure, but that still leaves you attacking people who are also speculating without factual evidence.

 

So please, stop lecturing me about pure speculation when your correlation of hiring practices = racism are basically pure speculation as well. You just have no way of knowing the motives of each and every individual case or even a statistically significant sample. At best you can look at the overall result and find issue with it (something I do not object to btw) but then you're extrapolating causation based on politically charged theories about institutionalized racism.

 

Those theories have far more merit where there's far more evidence to suggest a strong causation to racism like say, Police departments. This is probably not the case for most major corporations that actually bend over backwards to make diversity a very strong focus on everything they do. We all worked for this companies, we've all seen it and suffice to say there's basically nothing you can to do short of discriminating against white men to satisfy people who claim they do not speculate while speculating wildly.

[Misanthrope]

1 minute ago, Kumaresh said:

I will write a more cohesive and detailed answer in the morning.....

Don't think the thread will survive unlocked that long honestly.

[Commodus]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

you have a small percentage of females going into the stem field and then you have a large percentage of females in your workplace. this would imply that you are giving them the job based on gender to get to that large percentage. I am not saying that there aren't many qualified women in stem I am just saying that there are less qualified women than men purely because there are more men in the stem field. now if you were to look at the percentage of qualified women of the women in the stem field compared to the percentage of qualified men of the men in the stem field the percentage is very likely the same. this would mean women are just as capable as men in the stem field but not as many women decide to go into the stem field.

No, it doesn't imply anything.  All it says is that this company has a disproportionately large number of women.  An average does not mean that all companies must cling to that average for the cultural representation to be fair; there will be companies with fewer women than the average, and companies with more.  You'd have to demonstrate that there's a systemic pattern where companies with an unusually large number of women are only getting there because they're hiring underqualified women to pad the ranks... and, well, there's nothing to support that claim.

 

The truth, as is frequently the case in life, is likely to be pretty boring.  It may be a company whose products are generally targeted more toward women, like Pinterest or a specialized game studio, and thus attracts more women.  It may be that the local talent pool had a disproportionately large number of women.  And yes, it's possible that they were hiring friends who were still qualified.  The assumption that the company is "cheating" to get that higher representation says more about yourself than the companies in question.

[Misanthrope]

Just now, Commodus said:

No, it doesn't imply anything.  All it says is that this company has a disproportionately large number of women.  An average does not mean that all companies must cling to that average for the cultural representation to be fair; there will be companies with fewer women than the average, and companies with more.  You'd have to demonstrate that there's a systemic pattern where companies with an unusually large number of women are only getting there because they're hiring underqualified women to pad the ranks... and, well, there's nothing to support that claim.

 

The truth, as is frequently the case in life, is likely to be pretty boring.  It may be a company whose products are generally targeted more toward women, like Pinterest or a specialized game studio, and thus attracts more women.  It may be that the local talent pool had a disproportionately large number of women.  And yes, it's possible that they were hiring friends who were still qualified.  The assumption that the company is "cheating" to get that higher representation says more about yourself than the companies in question.

Again there's nothing to support the claim that one company has all the luck in the world and managed to hire most of the talented women available in the stem field (which by the way, will necessitate that all other companies will have an even worst ratio of almost exclusively males since all females are already working for the lucky company who snatched all of the females). 

 

Yet you expect us to believe that on a field that's dominated by white male candidates, hiring a larger percentage of white male candidates is an unconscious racist bias. Also without any evidence other than "It's true that white people hire other white people...in fields dominated by white people". 

 

Sorry but again, you cannot have it both ways: either nobody has conclusive evidence for either position of companies hiring too many or too few women or minorities, or both of the extremes here of SJ people and Conservatives, are just making shit up.

 

I tend to support the statistical data as is and look at the distribution of candidates interested in these particular fields. If you want to talk culture, you need to go way back to education and how society influences and steers men and women one way or another. A subject that's far beyond the scope of HR departments, meaning that again, both the memo author and you should not address in this context.

[AshleyAshes]

3 minutes ago, Kumaresh said:

That's the problem with all these social sciences. They rely upon a lot of conjecture instead of meaningful and concrete facts..... And there are no easy solutions to any of the aforementioned problems in this thread. For example, the issue raised by @AshleyAshes of being unable to find many people with great interdisciplinary competence, hence requiring a more diverse work force. That is a rather poor and shoddy solution. If such specific requirements exist which cannot be met by a limited number of people, wouldn't that entail just creating specialized positions to fix those particular problems and then hiring people for those positions based on merit again ? And trying to correct one unconscious bias with another overt bias in the opposite direction doesn't seem meaningful either....

What you're suggesting is basically ultra-specialization.  Where you would have a range of people tasked with ultra-specialized responsibilities.  This is weakness.  Such an arrangement is poorly adaptable and it requires basically an impossible understanding individual skills.  For your idea to be workable, you'd first have to be able to quantify every exact problem and scenario to be encountered and every individual hirees ability to respond to those problems and scenarios.  I'm assuming you're speaking from nearly no meaningful workplace experience, since your idea is more like it's from someone who reads a GameFAQ to find the 'perfect way' to play a video game.  Actual reality doesn't work that way.  Scenarios to be encountered can't be predicted with the accuracy necessary and employee skills can't be quantified with that level of accuracy.

 

But like I said it seems like you don't have any real world experience with, well, a work place.

[Misanthrope]

13 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

What you're suggesting is basically ultra-specialization.  Where you would have a range of people tasked with ultra-specialized responsibilities.  This is weakness.  Such an arrangement is poorly adaptable and it requires basically an impossible understanding individual skills.  For your idea to be workable, you'd first have to be able to quantify every exact problem and scenario to be encountered and every individual hirees ability to respond to those problems and scenarios.  I'm assuming you're speaking from nearly no meaningful workplace experience, since your idea is more like it's from someone who reads a GameFAQ to find the 'perfect way' to play a video game.  Actual reality doesn't work that way.  Scenarios to be encountered can't be predicted with the accuracy necessary and employee skills can't be quantified with that level of accuracy.

 

But like I said it seems like you don't have any real world experience with, well, a work place.

Ultra-specialization is a necessary evil in the IT world because of several factors

 

1) It takes a long time to train an individual to the level of specialization that it's needed to be competitive in certain areas

2) It is also difficult to retain an individual once you have provided this very specialized training since the skills are a hot commodity so they're very likely to be hired away by competitors

 

I personally do not like ultra-specialization in the IT fields because it creates fairly disposable employees as the specialized knowledge and skills are replaced by new developments in tech. Different languages emerge, different technologies are adopted and people who spend years specializing on a very competitive skill are suddenly left several steps down the position ladder while they acquire the new knowledge needed.

 

But at the end of the day the need for these positions is real: this has created terrible business practices like outsourcing and consulting vs more permanent staff and such. So it's not pretty but it is a reality in the IT world that even if you're fairly talented at several areas, even including several technical ones, someone with a few certification in currently popular areas will get a better paying job than yours quickly because those skills are immediately needed and bottom line companies will prefer to just hire an implementation team of consultants rather than hire and possibly train in-house engineers which ends up being exponentially more costly and slow than just getting the specialist to quickly develop and implement the new update or system you need.

[ravenshrike]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

The truth, as is frequently the case in life, is likely to be pretty boring.  It may be a company whose products are generally targeted more toward women, like Pinterest or a specialized game studio, and thus attracts more women.  It may be that the local talent pool had a disproportionately large number of women.  And yes, it's possible that they were hiring friends who were still qualified.  The assumption that the company is "cheating" to get that higher representation says more about yourself than the companies in question.

The larger a dataset the more it regresses to the mean. Google is a very large and very lucrative dataset. Thus the 'local talent pool' doesn't significantly enter into it. Moreover the complexity of their hiring process precludes a significant portion of 'friend hires'. Thus, the probability of their current ratio being due to chance is about as likely as a meteor destroying the earth tomorrow.

[Jito463]

55 minutes ago, Commodus said:

"candidates should be chosen solely on merit," but they completely gloss over the merits of a heterogenous work culture.  Women and minorities may not only approach an issue differently, but will think about social issues that a privileged white man might not consider

So, I think the NAACP has an under-representation of white males.  They need a more diverse work environment, as that will help them think about social issues differently.

 

Do you see how ridiculous that argument is?  Also, I love your implied racism, with "privileged white man".

[Ithanul]

18 hours ago, Okjoek said:

I personally don't get why the tech industry is so male dominant, but I have a hard time believing that it's sexism or discrimination. Personally I get the feeling that females don't like anything that distracts us from paying attention to them. Probably a wrong observation, but whatever...

 

I don't consider social justice as big a problem as economic justice, and economic justice... well let's just say I'm waiting for machines to take so many jobs that capitalism becomes anemic and cannot circulate the very blood it needs to function.

I am curious about this as well.

 

I was original a jet troop in the military (heavily male dominant).

Now I am in a IT Field in the military (seems closer to 50/50 to me, at least at the unit I am at).  I was actually surprised by this, since I heard IT field was male dominant as well.

 

The military tries to diversify the fields, but guess what, a lot of the fields are still dominated by certain genders.  The med flight at tech school looked the opposite of aircraft maintenance flights.