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Google, Tech, and [Diversity]
AngelHedgie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, Google (which is currently in the middle of a lawsuit over systematic wage discrimination) just had a bad Friday, as it was revealed that a screed decrying Google's diversity efforts was circulating around the company's internal network (Vice link, potential NSFW ads). If you want to read it, the full document is in the first link - it's filled with the usual evopsych goosery you'd expect, including a digression to The Bell Curve. What is more important to me, anyways, is the point made in this article:
And that, to me, is the important conversation. Why would this individual* feel comfortable in releasing such a screed in a semi-public forum, and what does that say about the culture both at Google and in tech? There is a longstanding struggle with diversity in tech (again, Google is facing a lawsuit over the issue at the moment,) and a good amount of it can be tied back to the culture of the industry as a whole. We've heard about the "leaky pipe" and how it is driven by society and cultural pressure - the issue is how do we fix it? One former Googler points out that a good first step is acknowledging that engineering itself is diverse in the skills it requires.
*Yes, I know his name is out there now. I intentionally left it out.
[T]he most important question we should be asking of leaders at Google and that they should be asking of themselves is this: why is the environment at Google such that racists and sexists feel supported and safe in sharing these views in the company? What about the company culture sends the message that sharing sexism and racism will be accepted? What message and values have past words, actions and lack thereof sent to the employees at Google. What has shaped the culture thus far, to get to this point? In short, Google leadership should do a post-mortem, a real one, on how the company got to this place where they’ve experienced such a catastrophic failure in their culture, assuming it is indeed viewed as such.
The second most important question leaders at Google need to discuss is this: do we want this to be an environment where racists and sexists feel safe and supported to share their views? Answering this question will likely be very hard and scary for execs at Google and at any tech company. Because saying no to that question means they would have to set policy to create an environment that is not a safe-harbor for bigots. It would mean defining real consequences for demeaning, insulting and ridiculing minorities, immigrants and the physically/mentally disabled. It would mean angering the “high-performers” who are also bigots. It would mean many fights about “free speech” and what it means at the company. It would mean that some people might quit, including some of the “high-performers.”
And that, to me, is the important conversation. Why would this individual* feel comfortable in releasing such a screed in a semi-public forum, and what does that say about the culture both at Google and in tech? There is a longstanding struggle with diversity in tech (again, Google is facing a lawsuit over the issue at the moment,) and a good amount of it can be tied back to the culture of the industry as a whole. We've heard about the "leaky pipe" and how it is driven by society and cultural pressure - the issue is how do we fix it? One former Googler points out that a good first step is acknowledging that engineering itself is diverse in the skills it requires.
*Yes, I know his name is out there now. I intentionally left it out.
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I liked Zunger's piece, but I hadn't read EricaJoy's, so thanks for linking that.
One point I empathized with in Zunger's post is that Engineering is both a broad and deep discipline. It's absolutely true that engineers need to have at least some facility in business analysis, project management, operations, soft skills, etc. But corporations that treat each employee as a black box producing widgets make it harder for those employees to engage in the kind of personal skills they need to grow into truly great engineers.
Given this culture of infantilization, what steps can one company take to fight against the tides of a larger society?
I think it's because these attitudes are somewhat widespread among men in tech and several related circles, usually comprised of people devoid that lack education in the humanities.
they may have been emboldened by such high profile (ish) figures as Joe Rogan and Maddox, neither of whom started out their careers as apologists for right wing stances on gender.
also, more than a few of these people seem to primarily interact with others through the internet. most of their contact is with like minded people, which is of course an issue across subcultures, both online and offline.
i kind of hope the guy gets fired, but on the other hand it could be dangerous if he became a martyr figure.
it's kind of funny that they assume all men are motivated by status. yes, status is a widespread motivator across societies, but it's a bit astounding that they've never wondered if people might be motivated by love of what they do more than status. kind of indicates an obsession with status that might stem from their own perceived lack thereof.
i think many of these people have been unsuccessful in dating/love, and have drawn the conclusion that rich men with trophy wives are the only template for heterosexual relationships.
you know what really worries me though? i read an article that seemed to suggest that support for traditional gender roles is rising among young adults and teenagers, compared to ten years ago.
i just read the rationalwiki entry on this person (hadn't heard of him before) and wow, the first thought that crossed my mind was whether this guy is a long-con comedy troll like Andy Kaufman. a christian nationalist sci fi writer PUA that's anti-vacc? what? how?
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
"cognitive empathy is better than affective empathy" because if you don't have to actually know how it feels to be in a position other your own, you can define their motivations in ways that suit yourself.
Does the author feel persecuted? Does he want Google to stop wasting their [virtually unlimited] resources on minorities?
There's no reason for this to exist.
I mean, at least if you think about it using the author's framework of cold, calculating logic. As soon as you start trying to imagine ignorant, biased reasons why it might get written, it becomes pretty hilariously clear.
Yes, and yes. Remember, to the privileged, equality feels like oppression.
See also: pushing the idea that they are "just having a debate" about whether women should be permitted entry to an industry, but distinctly unwilling to enter into a debate regarding whether they should be fired for creating a hostile work environment.
No, what guys like this are afraid of is the collapse of the lie that they have built their identity around collapsing - that they aren't where they are on their own merit, but because of their color and gender.
A common thread among racism and sexism is that it's an outlet for people who are frustrated at their circumstances to lash out at a convenient target. Supposedly, this guy is a junior engineer. Maybe he hasn't advanced as quickly as he thinks he deserves, and instead of either looking inward at his own mistakes, or accepting that maybe he isn't management material, or recognizing that sometimes advancement in a company is just dumb luck, he's latched on to the white-collar narrative of "they're taking our jobs." Lesser-qualified people are sitting in chairs that he thinks he deserves to sit in, promoted over him just because they're black or women.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
While I think that that that is probably true of someone who would write an article like this, I think the actual 'spine' of the issue is men looking for safe spaces and desperately trying to pretend they aren't doing that.
So they don't want women to come in, because they want to feel safe and protected to speak and act openly without judgement, but they have been conditioned by society to never say "I feel most comfortable around other men, and due to my complete absence of a social life due to the pressures of modern work, the only place I get to spend time with men is at work. I don't want any girls around because it would mess that up". These men in engineering may be powerful now, but many of them were not the top dog during their formative years. Thus they are afraid of, and intimidated by, women.
Honestly I think there's a whole suite of issues folding into this too. For example, not all 'Men in Engineering' are the same guy. Not even all 'White men in Engineering' are the same guy. Some are suave and sophisticated, some are introverted and shy. Some come in to work in their workout clothes after spending 40 hours white water rafting with their bros, and others come into work in stained t-shirts after a weekend bickering about GoT casting choices.
The relative absence of women in the workplace makes those two people equal. Men are trained pretty much from birth to compete for the attention of women, in both healthy and unhealthy ways. But regardless of how welcome/unwelcome those attentions are in aggregate, some men are far better at it than others. Stained T-Shirt guy might not care about women in the office, but he is probably highly concerned that if women arrive in his workplace then its going to make Workout clothes guy look far more successful than they do, because they know that men will judge each other based on how 'successfully' they interact with women.
So Stained T-Shirt guy might be perfectly capable of being a good and fair coworker to a woman, while workout clothes guy might pester her with all sorts of unwanted attention, but stained t-shirt guy is still the one saying, "We don't need women here" because he doesn't want to be judged himself in relation to his appearance/sexual identity/confidence.
I view this whole thing as being about safe spaces. It's why people at these companies can be overwhelmingly liberal in general, and individually seem quite welcoming to the idea of women in the workplace, but then fall down completely when it comes to actually getting women to come into the workplace. A swathe of old t-shirts and messed up jeans can be just as isolating for a woman entering the workplace as an insistence she dressed herself like a hooters waitress. She can't come in in old simple stuff to work and fit in, because if she does that, then society (and perhaps her own personal taste) will judge her for being slovenly. If she comes in dressed differently, then she faces exclusion because of that, because why shouldn't she try to conform to the way the workplace dresses? etc etc,
I dress better now.
I don't think it's fear. I don't think they see it that way. Rather they have completely internalized the idea that they made it on their own merit and that biases aren't a thing and differences in outcomes are based on gender and racial weakness and not discrimination and blah blah blah. All that other shit about how women are inherently inferior is just a way to defend and rationalize the viewpoint you already held. It's not that they fear it, it's that they don't believe it.
And once you don't believe it you look at policies to address workplace discrimination and you see a bunch of bullshit that is a waste of time and money and hires weak candidates. So you rage against it.
"Hey all this stuff the company values, let's value it less".
Basically, the All Lives Matter bullshit for sexism in engineering. They don't actually have a stance, or are advocating FOR anything, they're just advocating that all those pesky minorities who want fair treatment shut up already.
I work for IBM, and I can't even imagine anything like this making the rounds here. Partially because my team's main contacts are foreign (Canada, Mexico, and France mainly) and our infrastructure contacts are almost all female... and in Guadalajara. I'm sure other offices/teams have very different experiences, but whatever the fuck culture Google's promoting that lets something like this flourish, fuck that.
Yeah, which is just disgusting. Either they aren't owning up to their own failing, at which point they need to shut the fuck up about the credentials of others. Or they are for an excuse to justify shitting on others ,when they don't get ahead. If it's the later, it's a good case of how our society has failed to teach people to have reasonable expectations. After a certain point, advancement becomes harder, it's not just a matter of skill, it's also, and more often, a matter of networks or the interviewer, often the person managing the job, picking who they feel will be the best fit for the team (Granted, sometimes this in itself could be a result of failures on the person, if personality is ignored, they might be the best person for the job, but their personality or leadership style could make them a really shitty choice). This is on top of there being less and less job openings.
I would put money on this. Not just because the "manifesto" is vile and this idiot clearly has no clue what gender is, but also because the "engineering" he describes is of the most basic, simple, code-monkey sort that exists on the lowest rung of the ladder, and all those skills that he dismisses as "female" and therefore not worthwhile are exactly the skills anybody needs to advance their career to any sort of senior level of engineering.
This guy is blaming some sort concerted effort to discriminate against him for having pretty much every social advantage possible going for him, and he's doing it by writing a massively long essay that is a study in how little he understands his chosen career.
And that's before we get into the whole issue of him clearly being aggressively patronizing and hostile to anybody who doesn't fit his (flawed) image of the "perfect" engineer.
What a fucking loser.
Yes, Google has fired the goose.
Edit: Apparently, he forced the CEO to cut short his family vacation. That's never a good thing.
I've been thinking about this a lot in the past couple of years. When I felt like an awkward nerd teenager, I gravitated to other people who felt vulnerable too. In a small town in Texas, it seemed like nerds ought naturally to ally with feminists, atheists, and social justicars. I'm surprised and fascinated that one could go in the other direction.
Even as they upset me, I sympathize with them, because they're victims in their own way. They're looking for acceptance, and hate groups prey on them in their weakest moments. It reminds me of how my mom got taken in by an evangelical megachurch; it's a goddamn cult, trapping people. (She's better now.)
Even if we can keep hateful trolls out of Google, that won't stop the problem at its source. We have to work much further upstream and rescue people before they get brainwashed. I don't like everything about this Laurie Penny article, but a line near the end seems pretty important: "Whether or not these kids deserve a second chance matters far less than whether the rest of us can afford not to give them one."
I was musing in another thread about how revenge of the nerds was a movie about victims uniting against the jocks when the exact opposite happened in reality. now the nerds are some of the most vile, hateful sexists and racists around and we have jocks protesting police violence
I attribute it to the fact that a discriminated group will happily turn around and go after the next group below them on the ladder time and time again in history. no one wants to be the bottom rung, even if it means acting against their own self interest.
How disappointing. How many of you read the entire piece, and not just the frenzied descriptions of it and reactions to it? How many of you took note of the biologists who responded, none disagreeing with the statement of one who said:
How many of you took the time to find the author was a PhD out of Harvard's Systems Biology program?
Almost nothing claimed in this thread is based in sourced and researched fact, and that's a big fucking problem. You should all be ashamed, and Google has a hell of a lawsuit on its hands if this guy decides to give chase.
edit - another excellent quote from the Biologists who were requested to critique the post:
Did you read what he wrote? Did you read what those biologists said? If my post was the first time you saw those links, I already know the answer (because you cannot have possibly read either in five minutes).
edit: and I am met with deafening silence. The authors' scientific claims are all deeply established neuroscience, empirically tested and proved. If you offer no empirical proof to respond to his claims, then you may as well claim the Earth is a flat disk accelerating upward at 9.81 m/s^2, rimmed with the Antarctic mountains.
And yet, no one in this thread has offered any actual proof that he is wrong.
Which is the problem that Emissary is trying to point out.
Just calling him wrong and stupid doesn't make him so.
Maybe you should quote whatever you're trying to quote because this link to a libertarian online magazine that proves us all to be put in our place doesn't work.
"biologist" indeed. men are better than women guys, it's just simple biology. just like white people being smarter than black people.
The goose all but quoted The Bell Curve. We are under no obligation to treat every idea as equally meritorious of debate.
You're not exactly linking anything worthwhile to read. All this seems to me like the 'science' anti-vaccers cling to.
Not to mention that Emissary's claim is literally an appeal to authority without providing anything but a broken link, and even then makes wildly inaccurate claims about how no biologists disagree with it along the way.
The deafening silence is probably because nobody wants to eat an infraction for posting a gif of someone doing a jerk off motion.
You're trying to use two back up opinion pieces to suck all of the air out of any potential debate as if we're debating something as simple as 1+1=2. It's just an appeal to an authority that you're acting as if you are qualified to present it as gospel.
Slow it down dude.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Capitalized and bolded is absolute proof you haven't read what he wrote.
On the topic of the IQ test, everyone knows it's only modestly useful because it is so general. This is why tests for different axes of intelligence exist, and why it's a bad idea to get hung up on IQ tests.