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Google is struggling to discuss the recent diversity memo controversy internally:
Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, canceled a scheduled all-hands staff meeting—moments before it was scheduled to begin—meant to address concerns over a controversial essay published by former employee James Damore.
In an email to staff, Pichai explained that questions from employees had been leaked and that, in some cases, specific employees' identities were revealed, exposing them to harassment and threats. Instead of today's large-scale meeting, which was to be livestreamed to Google's 60,000 employees worldwide, smaller groups will meet sometime in the future.
"We had hoped to have a frank open discussion today as we always do to bring us together and move forward. But our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named personally," Pichai said in the email.
Also at CNET.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday August 11 2017, @04:07PM (11 children)
I disagree, this is more than just comment bait.
Allow me to digress. I'm a geezer in IT, and I have always held the same attitude on diversity: treat everyone as an individual. I don't care about plumbing, eye color, hair length, or anything else. Is this person, as an individual
So...30 or 40 years ago, treating people as individuals, not caring about gender or whatever, was considered rather liberal. Today, it's considered practically reactionary.
That's why I find articles like this useful. Even five years ago, almost every tech forum read like the ArsTechnica comments do today: horror at the idea of the Diversity Memo, bowing to the SJW principles. Few would have dared comment positively, few would have dared criticize the holy (holey?) principles of diversity.
The pendulum is swinging, and we see that it is swinging because many tech forums - like the green site, like Soyment - now have open discussions about the problems of diversity politics. SJW has become a pejorative. Progressive politics may still dominate the management and HR departments, but we can see progress.
For the next few years, the desperate defense of SJW positions will get ever more strident, as the barriers continue to fall. In a few more years, writing a Diversity Memo will no longer get you fired. In another decade, I do believe that affirmative action will be seen for the evil it actually is.
We will be able to follow this progress through the tone and content of the comments on articles and on sites like this one. And those articles and comments will influence the next generation, by helping to set the general atmosphere in which we do our work.
Of course, in 20 years, the pendulum will have swung to far in some other direction. We won't get a meritocracy, we won't get people treated as individuals. Instead, we will get...something else. Some other way for some other group of unqualified people to gather and exert personal power over those of us who just love technology and want to get the job done.
The fight will begin all over again. By then I'll be long retired, but I'll still be here and elsewhere, reading and commenting, hopefully applying some pico-newtons of force to re-center that damned pendulum...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Friday August 11 2017, @05:30PM (1 child)
I don't think I am in complete agreement with your position but I appreciate your taking the time to write a lucid, reasoned response.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Friday August 11 2017, @05:53PM
Ditto!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 11 2017, @06:12PM (4 children)
I think that will not happen. These companies are not going to get rid of diversity ideals. And indeed, the buzz is about a tiny minority inside Google agreeing with the memo. If there is opposition, they are either self-censoring themselves into silence or being marginalized by the press and Google's leadership.
Instead, it will be a lot like it is today, except tech bros and sisters will automate large sectors of the economy out of their jobs, and then automate themselves out of their own jobs. We will achieve a rainbow of diversity in unemployment. The elites will institute universal basic income. Then bored and unemployed individuals will be driven insane until they use their skills to destroy the planet with diseases, AI, fusion bombs, x-ray weapons, etc. Fermi Paradox fucking solved.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday August 11 2017, @06:29PM (2 children)
I didn't really care about the leaks all that much to begin with but I looked for them today. Since most normal news outlets don't mention the actual information or link to it one had to visit other sites, such as Breitbar (1), they seem to be mostly just try to put another source in context or whatever you should call what they do. But from those leaks it seems like there are a lot of people in Google-middle-management (or similar) that are now compiling blacklists of people with divergent opinions and refuse to work with them. These are I assume the same people that are not in fear due to it becoming public knowledge.
At the second link (2), a bit down the page there is a diagram showing a poll about the memo, it has at the time of the image being captured not that many respondents (only 278) but out of them it seems that about half disagree with the memo (mostly + strongly disagree 48,5%) while the "tiny" minority in agreement makes up about a bit over a third of the respondents (almost + strongly agree 36,3%). So there seems to be a bit more then a tiny minority inside the company that did agree with him, if we are to extrapolate out from this small number of respondents. It would be one thing if there was just a tiny percentage or two that had agreed with him. But it's somewhat different now that it seems to be 48.5 vs 36.3. Turns out there might be quite a few people that are "evil" or have divergent and undesirable opinions about "diversity" and affirmative action type programs.
(1) http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/revealed-inside-googles-sjw-cabal-blacklists/ [breitbart.com]
(2) http://voxday.blogspot.se/2017/08/suppressing-dissent-at-google.html [blogspot.se]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 11 2017, @06:44PM (1 child)
I covered my ass in the next sentence, and I assume the (unscientific) poll was anonymous.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday August 11 2017, @07:16PM
It's a very problematic poll, but it's all there is at the moment. The size is small, for all we know thousands voted later and the numbers shifted dramatically. Then there is anonymity or not. I would gather it came from some internal G+ discussion. Is there really anonymity on G+ or their other debate systems? There might be the illusion of anonymity but I doubt it actually exists if someone with backend access wanted to know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @09:06PM
Stop!, Stop! I can only get so hard!
I will not matter though We are much further along to nuclear war than when we had Reagan
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 11 2017, @06:47PM (2 children)
Exactly. As I pointed out already, nobody should give a fuck about anything except job performance. Can that midget code? Then give him a desk and throw his ass on a bar stool and let him get to work. Having worked for the military industrial complex, I have seen many bro-tier gay dudes and dykes who are strictly business and no-bullshit -- both of which could kick my ass in a split second.
Interviewing somebody with pink or blue hair? Give 'em a chance. If they are strictly business, that's good. If they throw out a lot of bad dog-whistles out there like "diversity" and "tolerance" then reject. Because we're discussing business, not politics. Do you code? Let's see it. What kind of shit did you fix in the past, what kind of bathrooms did you clean or what kind of shrubbery did you trim? Oh, a joke about a sports team? That's a harmless distraction and totally acceptable.
What needs to be done is to start a major technology firm catering to bros. Women and trannies will be welcome as long as they subscribe to the bro culture and be able to not only receive trash talk, but to dish it out. Parking lot fights will not be forbidden, but rather "team-building" exercises. Women, when given the ability to talk trash, have the upper-hand in calling a bro a micropenis'd limp-dick motherfucker.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Friday August 11 2017, @10:51PM
So basically you're saying that people should be evaluated on job performance, as long as they don't mess up the workplace culture?
"work well, don't mess up our club"...sounds reasonable to me.
The devil is, of course in the details: what is "work well", and when are you "messing up the club"?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:29AM
I think there's a difference between saying your code sucks and telling a person deserves to die etc. Same goes for parking lot fights.
Because, how will good code survive if sucking snowflake code gets to stay because.. diversity in bugs & core dump.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:01PM
So when are the Swiss going to return all that Nazi gold to the original owners?