SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the diversity-of-opinion-department dept.
Gizmodo got their hands on an internal memo gone viral at Google that criticizes extreme biases and blind promotion of diversity. The memo's author confronts the practice of silencing such minority opinions through shame:
"Despite what the public response seems to have been, I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change."
Are these hints of the writing on the proverbial wall? One fears the diversity pendulum will break rather than be allowed to swing back.
[Update: Google has written a memo to its employees about the document. - ed]
Also at Motherboard and BBC.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tonyPick on Monday August 07 2017, @10:24AM (66 children)
Is this
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788 [medium.com]
Standout paragraph...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Monday August 07 2017, @10:39AM (22 children)
Indeed, and having traits labeled "male" and "female" helps no-one, especially certain types of self-conscious people.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday August 07 2017, @02:27PM (21 children)
Add to that the incredible tendency of cisgendered people to have no clue WTF they're talking about. This really is one area where it helps to listen to somebody with some experience in what gender actually is. That person doesn't need to be me, but that person needs to have lived as both genders at a minimum in my view. Either that or they need to be just a bit more rigorous than the social sciences, but that will probably lead them to the same conclusions that are easier to access imho by just experiencing life as both genders.
(Perhaps it's ineffable, but it's definitely a thing, and no, gender is not merely a social phenomenon. Gender goes way back to single-cell organisms iirc. Now, granted, you've got to be a pretty complex animal billions of years later before you can even think about throwing the word cisgendered around, but hey.)
I think most cisgendered people understand that. That's why most cisgendered people (men and women) are not feminists. (A lot of women seem to think they're feminists, which I've learned to interpret as meaning that they believe in gender equality. So good for them!)
At any rate, what it isn't is some trait that both men and women are capable of, traits like cooperation and communication. Those are not traits you need a female brain to have! Given my personally horrific experiences with cisfemales, if I wanted to be a cisgendered armchair pontificator about what traits are essentially (oh goddess! there we go! here comes gender essentialism [wikipedia.org]!!argh!!1!eleven!), I would have come to the conclusion (and thus made the error of gender essentialism of assuming that my lone experience, just because perhaps I've found a handful of others who have had similar experiences, is representative of all 3.6 billion assigned males on the planet) that cooperation and communication are essentially male traits!
Yes, men and women are different, but not in petty ways like ∀ f ∃ {all 3.6 billion female humans on the planet} and m ∃ {all 3.6 billion male humans on the planet}, f is a better communicator than m.
See, here's problem. Feminism, a movement for white, upper-class, cisgendered women only, cannot shut their fucking gobs and stop pontificating about shit they would know better about if they stopped throwing their hands up in the air when presented with any basic maths and going, “Principia Mathematica is a raep manual herpa hurr durr!”
At the very least, show me two overlapping normal (fucking) curves, based on empirical, verifiable, repeatable data about communication, cooperation, or whatever skill, do the math, and tell me just how much area under the female normal (fucking) curve for communication is (fucking) also under the male normal (fucking) curve! It's a number that's (fucking) close to 1.0!
Aren't cisfemales and only cisfemales supposed to be better with curves (never somebody like me with an advanced infiltrator woman suit since my curves are apparently the result of some metaphysical rape ritual), because the best feminism can do is sympathetic (fucking) magic [wikipedia.org]?!
Oh! And no. Growing a child inside your body is not a skill. It's an animal function. I think I know a few (trans) men who have given live birth if you really want to know…. Go soak your goddess damned head, feminism.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday August 07 2017, @02:31PM (1 child)
(Just to clarify, I agree with turgid. But it's Monday morning, so there's my rant for the week.)
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday August 07 2017, @02:46PM
Bravo! *Round of applause*
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 07 2017, @04:29PM (18 children)
Yeah, sorry, trans folks do not help the matter at all. There are very real, physically and organizationally significant differences between the average male and female brains. This is well established, scientific fact. Trans people are no more capable of experiencing both sides of the coin than anyone else because they are doing so from the same brain no matter the outside packaging.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:04PM (17 children)
Big fail yet again! What else should we expect from you I guess.
The clue you in: it is the cultural experience of being a man/woman. Since you can't even grasp that simple idea I guess you'll just have to wait for your next reincarnation to become a better person, you've obviously given up trying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:13PM (16 children)
Bullshit.
Gender determination at birth: empirical physical fact. De plummin' don't lie, dog.
Gender determination by cultural experience: phony psychobabble.
Gender self-identification: Drama resulting from personal choice, not an external social crisis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:33PM (12 children)
Learn more science bud, your opinions based on very simple facts do not make a good argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:11PM (11 children)
Empirical evidence is science. Psychobabble isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @07:43PM (10 children)
My point was that you're ignorant and pretending that empirical evidence supports your case, but it does not. You can not apply statistical averages to individuals or small subsets of a population.
Science harder punk.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @07:59PM (9 children)
Nice try.
The stuff between peoples' legs is determined by chromosomes. That's science.
Statistics can be twisted worse than a pretzel. They are not empirical evidence.
Resorting to ad hominems when physical reality doesn't fit your SJW narrative is just...liberal.
Try again.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @08:27PM (8 children)
You're simplistic understanding of the world can not be reasoned with and you do not understand very much about human biology beyond whatever you learned in highschool.
Ad hominem? Try being less of a ignoramus by perhaps educating yourself and you won't be subjected to such methods.
There is a reason homosexual individuals exist, in humans and other animals. It is because "gender" is not quite a clear-cut as simplistic folks such as yourself would like to believe. Pretending like science is a SJW narrative really shows your own bias. You can pretend you're a smart person all day on the internet but when you spout off on things you don't fully understand then you are really just a donkey braying at a scary tree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @08:34PM (7 children)
Again, you fail.
Fail to understand the difference between actual biology and ginned-up feel-good pseudo-science.
Fail to see that not everyone in the STEM world buys into the pop-culture crappola that gets fobbed off as "research."
Fail to comprehend that disagreement =/= ignorance. I'll gladly put my MSEE up against your AA in Interpersonal Community Development or whatever shite major you think makes you sound superior.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @09:04PM (4 children)
They did studies, you know, on conservative brains, and they found out that conservative brains are different than normal brains, and focus much more on the reptilian, fear factor part of the brain. But since this is a real, factual, and scientific fact, it explains why conservatives think that there is a real, biological difference between male and female brains, since their brains are hardwired to expect this and to fear all that liberal "sciencey" psychobabble that liberals try to trick them into, using big words and serendipity to promote equality and diversity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @09:52PM (1 child)
It really is the only thing that makes sense, so much of the negative attributes from conservatives boil down to fear and anger intertwined. They see everything outside their personal world bubble as scary and WRONG, with tolerance only being given to things that are far removed from their lives.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:20AM
The first time someone asked me who is more driven due to fear between conservatives and liberals, I said conservative. The reason? Because they are trying to "conserve" something that is under attack by liberals. There was no real need to bring "science" into it but still apparently it helps liberals avoid any discussion and just promote hatred of an outgroup. Hey hey! Liberals are just as politically devoid of any moral standing as they accuse others of! Who knew?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @11:55PM (1 child)
Conservative? You presumptuous, conceited twat. I'm a life-long Anarcho-syndicalist (see: Noam Chomsky).
I'm just not trapped in the PC echo chamber like most Leftists.
I can therefore extrapolate that you're wrong about everything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @01:05AM
Sweet Mohammed on a communion cracker!! I hadn't thought about it like that! Well, since this AC has shown me the light I will refrain from mocking this thread further.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @09:10PM (1 child)
It isn't pop culture psychobabble, but I see where you got your expertise in biology from... Oh wait, you're one of those conservative electrical engineers who thinks their expertise with circuits has shit-all to do with the rest of science. At least you're not one of the self-educated "geniuses", but due to your expertise you have thus applied that to every field possible assuming that you know everything. Science marches on, and gender is much more fluid. Hermaphrodytes? Homosexuals? The fact that brain structure does not always equate to penis or vagina.
Failure to comprehend your own limitations is your problem. You write off uncomfortable topics as pop-culture garbage and get mad at my ad-hominems? lol, intellectually dishonest / ignorant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @02:38AM
You contards can't muster up decent rebuttals, GJ you circle jerking jerks :P
Glad to see the alt-right has fully taken over, all the people threatening to leave have pretty much done so. Way to create an echo chamber you geniuses.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @08:17PM (2 children)
Then how do you explain this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
That's called a mutation. An abnormality. A freak of nature.
Nature isn't kind, nor always pretty.
Deal with it.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @09:58PM
And such variability exists in the general population as well, though not as dramatic.
You are an ignoramus who desperately wants the world to conform to your own views, but it doesn't work that way. There are more than two states of existence for human beings, biologically speaking. Turns out the majority of gender difference is actually tied to the body's hormones. Woops, science leaking in again, guess you'll just have to
Deal with it
(Score: 3, Troll) by aristarchus on Monday August 07 2017, @10:42AM (6 children)
Sorry, but the best part is in the "suggestions" [gizmodo.com]:
Poor, poor, closeted conservatives! So afraid of open hostility! But why would this guy think that anyone would want to encourage conservatives to "express" themselves? We get enough of the "ick" factor right here on SoylentNews. But wait, there is more.
Yes, what Google needs is an affirmative action program for the poor conservative minority! They should be identified, and given safe spaces from those nasty libtards! And we should probably have a quota system of Dems and Republicans that matches the voting of, say, the last national election. My god, the stupid is strong in this one.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday August 07 2017, @12:02PM (5 children)
I spent first part of my professional life in my home country, somewhere in East Europe.
It was culturally well understood and accepted: when at office, we don't discuss politics, religion and soccer - we were not there to have divisive debates not related to profession.
I immigrated since then, and I apply the same rules (for myself at least); it's quite easy though, not actually a restriction, 'cause I haven't heard any of my colleagues initiating discussions on any of the 3 topics (replace soccer with Aussie-rules football).
So, I'm totally puzzled: how the heck has "conservationism vs progressivism" discussion have anything to do with an engineering job?
The problems at hand are technical, oblivious to your favourite political view or favourite sport team; I know it to be true, I yet to meet any software problem sensible to these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @03:57PM
That was the norm in the US for a long time, and it still is for non-software companies. It's a corporate culture thing.
The main difference is that, in a company like this, you're supposed to have friends - "colleagues" is too distant a relationship if the person is down the hall from you. Naturally, friends can discuss politics, so that's how it seeped into the working environment.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Monday August 07 2017, @06:09PM (3 children)
Because the Social Justice Warriors and Diversity Coordinators came to Google and politics came with them. Their motto is "You will be made to care. Or else."
This guy had probably been beavering away for years doing Evil Google Things and happy as a pig in shit, lot of challenging problems, great work environment, filled with smart and driven folks like him and little of the typical "cubeville" corporate bullcrap. Then he looked up from his grindstone and noticed the place had filled up with blue haired fugs and trannies who weren't contributing anything but drama. So he sez, "WTF?" and starts applying his engineer thinking to the problem of what happened to the happy nerd paradise and it didn't take long to get to the root of the problem.
It is sad, he still isn't even "red pilled" but is so far outside the range of employable beliefs his career in corporate America is done. Hopefully he is far enough up the skill ladder he can go out and do something interesting. Like Brendan Eich. Remember him? We have seen this story before. His only crime was quietly contributing $1,000 to a political fight that, it is important to remember, actually won at the ballot box in one of the most Blue States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @07:19PM
maybe all of those big business republicans didn't outsource the jobs of the white engineers, resulting in their animosity and lashing out at what they can see, as opposed to what they can't touch or impact, we wouldn't be in this predicament and everyone would be back to enjoying a true meritocracy.
when global resources are the path to profits, it need not matter how skilled you are if you cost too much. some people are just born good at engineering, and are unfortunately living in the wrong part of the world to be able to afford to contribute to society.
anyway you are doing a good job of playing for the corp yes man team. please try to address the problem instead of rationalize the hate, because it'll just lead to more outsourcing since management wont have to deal with it when people like you and him get their asses fired and the jobs sent to some other country.
trumps wall won't keep such jobs here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @07:45PM (1 child)
I, for one, fear we have alienated jmorris. But on the other hand, he has advocated illegal political actions here before, which means he must be an illegal alien. Instead of the conservative safe-space bubble, deportation may be in order.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @09:02PM
** To a place without internet
(Score: 2) by chromas on Monday August 07 2017, @11:03AM (1 child)
I just got AIDS from the comment system on that site.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday August 07 2017, @11:13AM
Too bad you didn't use antivirus software.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Monday August 07 2017, @11:09AM (29 children)
Some of the best engineers I've seen are male loners. In fact most of the really talented engineers I know are uncooperative, uncommunicative, and don't suffer fools much. I've seen one cranky uncommunicative guy do in a weekend what had stumped an entire engineering team that communicated and collaborated well for six months (quite literally, this entire team had been failing at solving a particular technical problem for six months, he went home for the weekend, didn't sleep much, and had the design sorted by Monday morning). Engineering is about having the talent and skill to roll up your sleeves and get the job done, not about group hugs and being in touch with your feelings.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by lx on Monday August 07 2017, @11:59AM (23 children)
Sounds like someone who will die young and unhappy. Possibly after shooting half the office staff.
Brilliance is no excuse for being an asshole.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday August 07 2017, @12:29PM (5 children)
The specific guy I'm referring to was in his thirties at the time, and is now in his late forties. He's happily married, and is still doing seriously cool EE work. Other engineers I know are still working in their sixties and seventies, because they're having way too much fun to quit now, retirement is boring in comparison. I don't know any who have died young, unhappy, or after shooting anyone, although I'm sure there are some around, as there would be in any profession.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @12:40PM
Ooh just like Hans Reiser.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 07 2017, @03:55PM (3 children)
He's happily married, and is still doing seriously cool EE work. Other engineers I know are still working in their sixties and seventies, because they're having way too much fun to quit now, retirement is boring in comparison
Not me, I'm much younger than that still, and I can't wait to retire. Honestly, I hate working in engineering any more. It doesn't matter how cool the work is, the workplaces are abysmal and miserable, thanks to the "open-plan office" that everyone's adopted in the last 15 years. I kinda wish I could go back in time and work in the 70s or 80s, as long as I don't get stuck in an office where people smoke indoors. The 90s seemed to be the real peak for engineering: people still had cubicles, but smoking indoors had become verboten.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday August 08 2017, @01:41AM (2 children)
Just a guess here, did you work in an organisation that had a diversity wellness nondiscrimination multicultural social justice coordinator? The one where "diversity" means everyone has to conform to the nondiscriminationmultisocialcultural whatever norms? The places I was referring to in previous posts are ones that practice true diversity, where the mgt. recognises that not everyone is the same bland metrosexual touchy-feely whatever that the nondiscriminationmultisocialcultural coordinator wants them to be. The engineers were given their own lab, or labs (basically just a room or two where no-one would bother them), whatever toys they needed, some control over their own budget (within limits, otherwise they'd end up buying that Sandia-surplus X-ray powder diffraction machine that we have no obvious use for but it's only $30K, who could pass that up?), and told to get to it. And that's true diversity, recognising that we're not all the same bland units and providing an environment in which individuals can thrive.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 08 2017, @02:29AM (1 child)
Software engineers don't usually need labs, just desks big enough for dual monitors. I've worked at a bunch of different places, large, medium, and small, and since the turn of the century they've all steadily moved to open-plan offices. It's not just me, you can read about it all over. I've seen reports that over 70% of office jobs in America are open-plan (and that's not just software). It's very hard to find any place now that has full-height cubicle walls (much less actual offices).
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday August 08 2017, @03:02AM
Ah, yeah, I was talking about EEs, not software guys. Open-plan offices seem to have originated with efficiency experts in the 1950s and based mostly on gedanken experiemtns, aided by the fact that you can cram a helluva lot more people into the same space if they don't all have their own office. There's now a ton of research showing they basically don't work (see e.g. this article [inc.com], with pointers to studies supporting it, one of many such), but it's hard to argue against being able to pack your employees in like sardines vs. having to give them their own space.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @01:20PM (8 children)
"Brilliance is no excuse for being an asshole."
That may or may not be so - but feel-good bullshit is no excuse for failure. I'm one of the guys who doesn't want to attend another meaningless meeting where everyone gets to say something, while everyone nods their heads in agreement. I'm one of "those guys" who wants to pick up his tools, and tackle the problem - with or without help. The feel-gooders can't get the job done, and I do. I shit you not - I've seen half a dozen men huddled around some piece of equipment, talking the job to death, and failing to get it done. I come in, they go home, and I get the damned job DONE. If you want aesthetically pleasing work, you can wait on the talking heads, and you may or may not get the thing working sometime this year. Let me at it, it may be ugly, but it WORKS.
Maybe you'd like to make another excuse for failure?
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @03:54PM (6 children)
Ah, you're one of those people. Make it work whatever the cost! Personally I can't stand know-it-alls like yourself who just come in and slam a job until its done. Almost always some detail is lost, some potentially important safety factor ignored, etc etc.
Then again, I've also seen the group of guys who sit around for an hour accomplishing literally nothing :/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @04:25PM
Are you saying that Runaway is the Cable Guy? Thought that was a parody of certain redneck Southern American males. . . . Oh, right.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @05:02PM (3 children)
Well, part of your problem is, you expect us to idiot proof everything we do. But in the race to produce idiot-proof, and to produce better idiots, you always win. We could strip some of you fools naked, toss you inside of a rubber padded room without corners, and you would still hurt yourselves. Even if gravity were turned off, you would STILL hurt yourselves.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:36PM (1 child)
Brilliant counter argument! Who needs OSHA? Fucking pansies want to protect people.... Natural selection, Darwin awards!
I'm sorry for triggering you so hard, I didn't think you tough military types were able to be hurt by mere words. Lets hug it out bro, bring it in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:15PM
Yup, Runaway does need a safe space where he can just work on machines, with no other people around. He's not anti-social, he's just more a-social. Not quite human, actually. More of a poor version of John Galt, without the original talent. He does not work well with others. Does not post on Soylent well with others. Poor, poor, Runaway.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Tuesday August 08 2017, @09:05AM
I really love the victim-blaming mentality of macho asshole engineers. Somehow it's always the user's fault when they push an unlabeled and unprotected button that sets off a nuclear explosion.
Sure, there are no practical limits to human stupidity, nevertheless it is part of the responsibility of engineers to make a reasonable effort to make it difficult for a normal person to kill or injure themselves or others accidentally while using a product or building in a normal manner. But because of attitudes like yours we have many objects and machines in existence that have killed or injured many people repeatedly, and nothing is ever done to change the design, because of victim blaming. If a company started selling a chair that exploded when you sat on it, there would be some asshole defending the resulting user death toll by saying they should have read the manual more closely. With some of the insane design failures I've seen blamed on end users I don't even feel like I'm being hyperbolic at all.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 1, Informative) by khallow on Monday August 07 2017, @09:31PM
I would recommend sitting down then.
The perversity of this statement is that people who don't "slam a job" often have the same problems. It depends on the situation. The job may be well defined and understood enough that you can slam it and cover those safety factors. Or it can be so complex and obscure that slamming it is the fastest way to learn what the details and safety factors are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 08 2017, @06:30PM
Man, that's fucking *EVERYONE*, it's got nothing to do with "feel good bullshit". Christ, I work with unix shell developers who look at a shebang and say "Well that can't matter; it's commented!" Or folks who ask for support because a job that's never run before returned a success code but printed "Moving previous day's files" followed by "Files to copy: 0" followed by "mv: name* not found". Or the people who see a job failed and report the FIRST FREAKING LINE IN THE LOGFILE as the "error", ignoring the hundred lines below that after which is the log of the ACTUAL error that occurred. Or the unix shell developers who spend months working on an rsync script and can't figure out why it won't cross filesystem boundaries. Then you ask them why they have a "-x" if they want it to cross filesystems and they have no clue what "-x" does or possibly even what a filesystem is. The other day I had to teach someone on my team HOW TO COUNT. Seriously, he was trying to count days since an event, and he'd point to the day it happened and count "1". Took two people to explain that shit to him. AND HE'S A SYSADMIN!
"Coders" are a dime a dozen these days -- twenty or thirty years ago that wouldn't have been the case. "skilled coders" are still expensive, but management doesn't know the difference, and hires whoever is cheapest. THAT is the root of your problem. They'll hire anyone intelligent enough to copy a couple acronyms onto their resume, and they'll probably hire that idiot over the guy who sends in something honest, because they look better on paper. And everything is decided on paper.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @01:46PM (4 children)
"Asshole" and related terms marginalize those who, for whatever reason, do not buy into the social kool-aid of the day that the extroverts are pushing. In the end, the PC push in the STEM fields is the sane old story: extroverts marginalizing and excluding extroverts in yet another aspect of life. This would have nothing to do with politics, except that the extroverts seized and operate the Socialist far left as a tool of their persecution of the introverts, who in reaction have found some shelter among the right wing as advocates of "personal responsibility."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 07 2017, @03:57PM
In the end, the PC push in the STEM fields is the sane old story: extroverts marginalizing and excluding extroverts in yet another aspect of life.
I really wish the extroverts were marginalizing and excluding the extroverts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @04:34PM (2 children)
Speaking of drinking the kool aid.... Yes, your workplace issues are the result of the Socialist far left. Or it could be your general attraction to insane ideas, most likely coupled with angry outbursts which you call "debates" that really alienate your coworkers. PC culture went too far, now we're seeing the pendulum swing back a bit but stop with the seriously crazy persecution complexes before the pendulum goes too far AGAIN!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 07 2017, @05:03PM (1 child)
That is the nature of a pendulum - it's almost always to far one way or the other.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:09PM
Did you skip the lesson on amplitude in oscillating systems?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 07 2017, @04:32PM (1 child)
Neither is progressiveism.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @08:34PM
And most certainly neither is Alt-Rt Conservatism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @06:48PM
For every time somebody says they think an autist will go on a shooting rampage, I wonder how many autists actually do? Probably something like one in a million.
What a dumbshit thing to say.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FakeBeldin on Monday August 07 2017, @01:37PM (3 children)
You seem to have missed the point of the post you quote.
The whole point of the post you quote was to state that technical solutions are necessary and challenging and interesting - and that that's only a small part of engineering. It states that technical skill is where engineering begins, not where it ends.
A similar argument was made here: software engineering != computer science [drdobbs.com].
Your counterargument does not detract from what these posts state, namely, software engineering is a discipline based on technical skills as well as social skills. Someone who shows excellent performance in technical skills can thus contribute well, that was not in dispute.
What is in dispute is that it is possible to ensure the success of large-scale software engineering projects without social skills.
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 07 2017, @04:34PM (2 children)
Linus. Torvalds. *mic drop*
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @05:14PM
There are exceptions to every rule, and Linus gets raked over the coals quite often. Also, he obviously has some amount of real social skills on top of his ability to totally berate contributors.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @12:14AM
Linus Torvald has social skills, but he doesn't have dick sucking skills. Or sugar coating skills, if you want a prettier version. He will go ape shit when he has enough shit going around; instead of being an sleazy or back stabbing guy, he will go face to face. He even admits he is a git, instead of hidding behind a mask. And we should be happy about how he is, or we would already had kdbus sneaked in.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 07 2017, @03:47PM
That's true when your primary job is to write code or something like that. But when your job includes, as it often does, mentoring or managing less experienced folks, or sitting in committees and design meetings and such, the "don't be a dick" side of things matters a lot.
An example of how much it can matter: Dennis Ritchie. Sure, he was a top-notch software engineer on his own, but he was also a fantastic collaborator as demonstrated by the high opinion that everyone he worked with had of him. At no point in writing Unix did Ken Thompson decide Dennis was too much of a jerk to work with and abandon the project. Ditto with Brian Kernighan, when creating C. And while yes, he could have gone off and tried to do what became Unix and C on his own and probably come up with something pretty good, odds are that by keeping high-quality collaborators happy the end results were better than what he could have created on his own.
Or you can tell the same story with Linux: Linus doesn't suffer fools by any means, and he'll sometimes be downright abrasive (almost always, the target completely deserves it), but he's enough of a people person to keep major contributors like Alan Cox happy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @03:16PM (2 children)
I think many of the most successful entrepreneurs throughout history here would disagree.
The famous quote from Henry Ford immediately comes to mind: "Any customer can have a car painted in any color they want, as long as it's black." Another quote, also from Ford, is along the same lines: "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse." So much cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for his customers... And Steve Jobs goes without saying. At least I think it does. For those that don't know - he was an absurdly egocentric asshole who most of everybody found insufferable, but he had a knack for being able to package and pick products that would resonate long before the market realized they wanted them. Travis Kalanick has been greatly demonized by our progressive media in recent times. Yet he is an incredibly successful entrepreneur and businessman who has changed the world and gone from a middle class first gen family of immigrants, to being a billionaire before he's 40.
And it goes on. This whole thing about engineers need feels and empathy is nonsense. You know what you need to be a good engineer? You need to be good at engineering. Take a look at the thousand most successful engineers and I imagine you'd find their "social skills" likely rank well below average. Being very good at what you do tends to make you less tolerant of people who are not. Elon Musk is happy to make comments like "Zuckerberg's knowledge of AI is... limited" in a public forum. If he's willing to call out inferiority from one of the most influential individuals in the world today, imagine how tolerant he is of it among those he surrounds himself with. This is why people like Musk are getting us to Mars while the author [linkedin.com] of this counter-diatribe is busy tasked with doing things like managing the development of Google's own version of Clippy. Oh he moved on he said. Right, maybe he's now onto another world changing project like building another social media app. I mention this only to emphasize his distorted view of success given he clearly seems to need little more than a mirror to find the hottest shit in existence.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @03:26PM
I decided to go check his Medium account since he mentioned he'd be talking more about his future work. And, this guy is a complete stereotype. He's moved onto humu.com. What's humu? Well their site sums it up with a quote, "Laszlo Bock, Google’s work guru, starts new company that may be a ‘LinkedIn killer’." So.. yeah, a new social media app. Middle management turned yet-another-social-media-app-startup is exactly the sort of person I'd expect to look down on raw engineering talent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @10:56AM
Just one thing. Steve Jobs was brilliant at design concepts , one of the best ever. But he was not an engineer. Not even close. That was Woz's job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @03:32PM
Large scale cooperation and collaboration between males is one of the distinguishing traits that make humans stand out from other social species. In most other social species, males compete continually for survival and mating status even when they live in the same group unless they are closely related. Although, there is some indication that this goes out the window whenever a fertile female is available.
And, don't confuse empathy with sympathy.