The toughest thing to realize is that it is not obvious. Other posters here say it's a human, which was my assumption. But I wouldn't bet my savings either way anymore.
If you do that then the US would respond by doing things like attempting to block EU laws that affect US companies. They're American companies. You can't just block them. American companies won't refuse to follow American law. If you put them in a position where they are forced to either follow American law and European law that are in conflict then they'll be forced to withdraw from the European market.
And that's a good thing. I don't want AI playing overlord about what I can and can't search for. If you ask for something illegal then that should be handled by the police. Everything else is fair game. Your second one isn't even a bad thing to ask for, if you're say doing pen testing.
There's a reason they were a Japanese language invention because the idea of "symbols = meaning" is not something that would have likely natively happened in English, at least to a wide extent. We would have still been writing :-)
> Musk is super popular in the outspoken nazi demographic.
It's sad seeing such poor misinformed takes like this on hacker news. I guess Marc Andreessen and the President/Co-Founder of Stripe, among many others, are nazis now. It's well known that among the group that I would call "pro-America technologists" that he's highly appreciated and many want to figure out how to replicate him.
> and spaceflight fans.
As a spaceflight fan who was a fan of Musk all the way back in ~2012, I'm still a fan of him today, even if I have more issues with him today than I did back then. I can confidently say that many spaceflight fans feel the same as I on this. People overstate his controversial opinions (and being a nazi is not one of them) and understate his past achievements (and continued achievements).
> It's well known that among the group that I would call "pro-America technologists" that he's highly appreciated and many want to figure out how to replicate him.
> As a spaceflight fan who was a fan of Musk all the way back in ~2012, I'm still a fan of him today
Elon is a rare human being.
He is pretty much what his haters think of him (a political/social troll/child).
And he is also what his worshipers think (a generationally incredible technical and business visionary).
Most people, whether ordinary or extraordinary themselves, have trouble with dissonance. Elon is dissonance. They see a joke or a god.
A small segment sees both sides clearly. I find it a painful experience. Overlapping extremes of inspiration and damage. But reality isn't all bubblegum and glitter go pops.
After the taking Tesla private tweet that got him in trouble with the SEC he hired some people, but that didn't last long. Tesla had a PR team until a few years ago but he probably did not listen to them very much.
His companies have certainly had PR teams a various points in time. Tesla even does advertising now. But the topic is specifically about the man himself which is independent of his companies. Most very rich but (un)popular people have personal PR teams.
> It's not just about transgender people. When you have a tech organisation and say "all our members are old white guys... maybe there's something that keeps others away from us? let's make sure there are no barriers", you're engaging in DEI.
Yeah and that's obviously problematic, because the common way that's implemented is a either a whole lot of strange brainwashing courses or active discrimination against "old white guys".
> the common way that's implemented is a either a whole lot of strange brainwashing courses or active discrimination against "old white guys"
Are the common, strange brainwashing courses in the room right now?
This is obviously a bad faith take - trying to prevent anyone from even saying, let alone promoting, diversity because sometimes people discriminate (which is already illegal) is absurd even without acknowledging that discrimination happens already. This argument looks a LOT like "keep discriminating against people that aren't like me".
Constructive criticism for good faith people out there reading this who are concerned about "DEI" causing discrimination -- acknowledge all discrimination is bad and take a real stab at working on it as a whole. If your only "attempt" to prevent discrimination is speaking up against people trying to include more diverse sets of people in programming communities then you're doing it wrong (and showing your ass).
Yes that is what the equal protection clause is. Equity policies try to go beyond that by instituting "reverse racism" (which is really just racism) or any of a variety of other sort of policies that actively harm majority groups to try to force some kind of equitable representation.
I'm a straight white dude living in the United States. I'm as much part of the "majority" as one could possibly be, and this sentiment always confounds me.
Never once in my 20+ years working for corporations and government contractors, including companies with very strong DEI programs, have I ever felt excluded or marginalized. And I've never witnessed "reverse racism" (which is a totally absurd name for what would just be racism).
What I have experienced, several times, is people who look like me thinking I'm one of the boys, and flat out telling me they don't hire woman because they "cause too much drama", or only hire women they want to have sex with. And those are just two examples of dozens. Thanksfully those situations have plummeted over the years.
You flat out will not get an equitable work environment if you don't place a focus on it.
Exactly in the same boat here. At an old job I once had one of the most useless people in the office, in a 1-1 meeting, tell me that the black people in the office were only being hired for DEI/nepotism (he didn't say "black people"). He felt comfortable saying this to me because I look like him, which means that other folks in the office obviously share his mentality.
Wait till you get old, as everyone will. Also, because you personally haven’t experienced something yet is not that relevant.
Remember the story about enforced diversity statements at universities, and the ex-soviet math teacher warning against them? I do and it was discussed here.
YMMV: I haven’t seen age discrimination from people who seriously supported DEI: quite the opposite, they are generally summed up as “hire people who can do the job” which doesn’t exclude age.
I have seen it from the same types of people who oppose DEI: born affluent, convinced that anyone who can’t retire at 45 chose not to, etc.
I restarted my career in my 30s. I'm literally working in a field right now where people almost half my age are at the same level I am, and people my age or younger are my boss. Have never had a problem all through the career transition.
I'm not just saying me personally. I'm saying I have never even heard a creditable case of "reverse discrimination" in all my years, across all my colleagues.
DEI initiatives seek to put minority groups on the same level as majority groups. So they get the same consideration as everyone else, not more consideration. If that bothers you I don't really know what to tell you.
You don’t hear about the vast majority of discrimination instances because one simply doesn’t get hired. Often on purpose, “no culture fit” can’t be proven.
You have and will experience it, though usually won’t know. Thinking it doesn’t happen is very naïve.
I mean in this case I think it's fairly useful. I'm the exact demographic supposedly impacted by this. I've work for corporations for 20+ years, and watched the culture shift around me. I have friends and colleagues in several different industries. I've been a hiring manager for years. In all that time, literally the only complaints I've heard directly, or from people I know, are people complaining they can't be racist/sexist anymore.
For the record though, I'm 100% sure a white person hasn't gone a job because of their skin color. People suck, and that doesn't stop being true because of skin color or gender. My point is that DEI isn't some grand conspiracy against white people. They're for the most part well meaning policies intended to equalize a playing field that has been fundementally uneven for essentially all of human history.
As mentioned elsewhere, like Agile… it’s not hard to take a good idea and twist it into something bad, in fact happens often. My first reply has examples.
I haven’t seen or heard of any professional rascism, sexism, etc directly with my own senses either—in my whole life. Does that mean they don’t exist? Of course not, but that’s what your statements above sound like. “I haven’t seen => doesn’t exist.”
Of course it exists. Anytime you give people power someone is going to abuse it. That's never going to go away. And the people who are going to abuse that power will do it regardless.
I and people I know have directly observed racism/sexism in our careers, and they have without fail been exactly what DEI initiatives are intended to help prevent.
If someone is using DEI initiatives to abuse their power, that should be dealt with, obviously. But that's not indicative of some conspiracy.
I suspect if I ran down the extremely long laundry list of terrible things done by big corporations you wouldn't argue all corporations should be abolished.
These ideas already existed, as EOE and affirmative action. I support the first, and could support the second in limited cases. As a nationwide movement of unlimited scope and allegiance statements—definitely not. The incentive for favoritism is just too high.
The solution to dead laws is remove any chance of them being enforced? The solution to ageism is to make policies that attempt to enforce the laws and human rights illegal? Really? Thankfully nobody has made it illegal to do Agile correctly rather than following the tautological Official Agile Process(tm).
Some for me. I worked at a university ground zero for the ‘woke’ wave and I never once had trouble getting hired or advancing as a straight white guy. These people keep shouting DEI! DEI! And I have no ideas what their fucking problem is.
Gaslighting is their whole thing. Lying about absolutely everything means gradually ordinary people have no idea that facts are true or even what could distinguish a fact from an opinion.
This only stops working when it bumps into Mother Nature's laws rather than man's laws, so that's what you have to focus on with these people. It's brutal but it's entirely impartial, they can tell Fox News that black is white and up is down, but Ma doesn't give a shit, and they hate that. Who does she think she is?
I think "The US government is too unpredictable at this time to be a trustworthy source of funding" is actually pretty in-touch with reality, unfortunately.
“Inclusive” - meanwhile, I’ve not felt comfortable at a PSF-sponsored event since 2013, when people started losing their jobs for barely off-color jokes… and for reporting them.
PlayHaven's CEO implied their reasons to fire the employee who made inappropriate jokes at PyCon were not the jokes alone. Most people assumed SendGrid would not have fired the employee who attempted public shaming if she instead reported the jokes. And how were PSF responsible for what PlayHaven and SendGrid did?
What is it that you say on a regular basis that makes you feel like you need to walk on eggshells?
As I've said many times in the comments. I have 20+ years experience working for corporations. All through the me too wave, the increase focus on DE&I, and the general move to try and be less exclusionary. I've worked with woman, gay people, trans, and people of just about every ethnicity you could think of. Never once, in all those years, have I ever feared for my job or felt excluded.
Literally the only people I have ever heard complain are the ones I know for a fact tell racist and sexist jokes because they always felt comfortable enough around me to tell them.
If the fact that we are a bit more mindful about being racist and sexist in the work place bothers you, I think you may need to look inward at your own behavior. Not outward.
This is exactly the kind of dishonest manipulative baiting that makes people feel uncomfortable. Absolutely nothing InvertedRhodium said was in any way racist, and your allegations otherwise are both wholly devoid of evidence and against the community standards here.
If you can't make your point without leveling extreme and baseless allegations at fellow posters, that's a good sign that your point is without merit.
I didn't say he was a racist. But we are talking about feeling excluded in environments where the primary change has been it's not longer acceptable to tell racist/sexist jokes or make disparaging comments about others based race/sex/ethnicity.
People have had three opportunities now to give concrete examples of behavior that should be acceptable and makes them feel excluded or like they need to walk on eggshells. Nobody has offered a single thing.
So point blank: What can you not say or do in these environments for fear of reprisal?
Don't agree with the comments above and generally support DEI initiatives, but I also have an example.
A new DEI director joined a previous employer and started a mandatory survey to affirmatively label everyone's trans status. Whatever you entered would be used to auto-update your public info page with details on whether you identified as trans or not, with no opt out. I hope I don't have to explain why that's ill-considered at best.
Anyway, refusing to fill it out immediately escalated to a disciplinary meeting with the director.
This isn't a good example, because this isn't "walking on eggshells", this is an example of a misguided policy that has unintended consequences, and in your own example, when they understood the unintended consequences, they removed this.
Sure, this person was probably bad at their job, and that's problematic, but this isn't an example of someone being fired because they said something non-problematic.
Correct, they didn't remove the policy or change their views on the surrounding context of the disciplinary meeting. They simply understood the issue after it was explained to them. It's not a high bar.
The director was a trans woman themselves, just not good at their job. At least they recognized the issue when was pointed out to them in that meeting, but this was just the tip of the iceberg for silly changes they pushed.
> where the primary change has been it's not longer acceptable to tell racist/sexist jokes or make disparaging comments about others based race/sex/ethnicity.
This is simply untrue. Such conduct was already completely and utterly unacceptable prior to "DEI", for decades. These policies have instead enabled disparaging comments about others based on race/sex/ethnicity — in particular, accusing people belonging to certain such groups of being inherently whatever-ist (see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWoC90bbsdo), while defining away discrimination perpetrated against them (to move back towards the original topic, this claim was repeated many times in the discussion of the removal of references to "Strunk & White" in PEP 8).
> What can you not say or do in these environments for fear of reprisal?
For example, I doubt that you could refuse a request to state your "preferred pronouns", or critique the idea of making such requests or normalizing the culture around them.
I did. I don't have my pronouns in my email or my bio at work. Nobody gives a shit.
For the record, it's not because I have any particular issue with trans people. If they want to put that info in their bio, or other people do, that's fine. I'm just not interested.
So is your assertion that trans people don't exist? Or it isn't a real thing? And you think it's unfair that you don't feel comfortable talking about that at work? Just for clarity.
> So is your assertion that trans people don't exist? Or it isn't a real thing?
No; and it makes so little sense to hypothesize that on the basis of what I actually wrote, that I cannot take seriously the possibility that you want to discuss this in good faith.
First, gender is an identity marker, and I broadly agree with https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html . The entire point of the feminism I was steeped in from early childhood is that sex is supposed to be one of the least interesting things about me. As I grew up and became educated about the existence of transgender people (starting in the 90s, BTW), naturally I figured that the same applies to gender as considered separately from sex.
Second: as a matter of ideology, I consider that people, on an individual level, should not be compelled to see others as those others see themselves, and certainly should not be compelled to express a particular view of others. That violates my conception of freedom of speech philosophically (and many have made the legal argument as well).
Those two points tie together: the social contract in play here is that you don't have to care about things that we agreed are a priori uninteresting about me, and therefore I should have the same freedom. The "pronoun culture" violates that contract. (N.B.: this culture is not just about asking people for third-person pronouns; it's about normalizing the act of proactively stating them in an introduction.)
This is not the same as the expectation of various social courtesies, because those concern face-to-face interaction. That is: if you tell me "my pronouns are...", my thought process is that this has no bearing on how I interact with you. When I speak with you, I will refer to you as "you", just as you would to me. The pronouns described are third-person; if you expect me to use them, you are inherently placing an expectation on conversations that do not involve you. (I am unaware of any world language with gendered second-person pronouns, and am happy not to speak any.)
I have had many activists try to tell me that they don't know me but they're sure I use third-person pronouns all the time in group conversations, to refer to members of the group who are present but who I'm not speaking to directly. I have tested this and they are wrong. It does happen rarely in groups of close friends where there is absolutely no question of gender. But even then, I disagree that "I discovered that someone in my group sees me as having a gender other than what I personally identify with" can be considered a form of oppression, or even an objective matter. The activists cannot have it both ways: if "gender" is something that people are free to "identify with", which leaves no identifiable or externally verifiable signs, then it cannot also be a natural fact about the world. Gender identity and gender expression are separate, and the latter is not fully under our control.
If you say that I should prioritize what others tell me over what I can directly observe, you are trying to control me (or enable others to control me). It is exactly the same as if you demanded that I agree that others are physically attractive if they believe themselves to be so.
> Why would you refuse a request to state your preferred pronouns?
Because I reject the underlying conceptual framework, as well as the worldview that makes such a "preference" important or valuable.
> If you're asked and refuse to say, how are people to know which ones to use?
By making their own judgement, as is everyone's natural right.
It is simply not reasonable to demand that others see you as you see yourself. It is correct and just that people are permitted to see others as they will.
When we speak of "pronouns" in this context, we speak of third-person pronouns. Therefore, it is inherent to the concept that I am not privy to the discussion when they are used to refer to me. To refer to others in third person, knowingly, in front of them, is in my view at least unprofessional and likely rude — as it entails speaking on that person's behalf.
If someone guessed wrong (say you had long hair and they assumed you were a woman therefore and used female pronouns when you use male pronouns for yourself), would you correct them?
If not, you're quite unusual but I can't argue that.
As it happens, I do get thus misidentified (per my self-perception) fairly often, because I use a female-presenting avatar on some social media (it relates to prior work). If I notice, and it seems like the other person might care, I do explain; but this is never with any offense (because I have taken none) but only amusement or confusion ("zahlman" matches s/(?<!wo)man/ and I'm not looking at my own avatar generally). I can't recall anyone ever persisting in such "misgendering", but I would not care.
For all I know, countless people refer to me with female pronouns in discussions I can't observe. I get the impression that many people are constantly bothered by such a possibility. I only ever think about it when this exact discussion comes up, and then I simply do not care. I consider that the people in those discussions have the absolute right to do so.
Speaking of which, I have had this exact discussion many times in the last several years, and it's only because of the asking-about-pronouns culture that this is possible. In the decade or more that I knew transgender people in my life before that, none of this mattered and I could get on with my life, and have the same friendly relations with transgender people as cisgender people. There is more social friction now than there was then.
> For all I know, countless people refer to me with female pronouns in discussions I can't observe.
Do you think you might feel differently on the topic if they did it continuously in discussions you can observe and when you tried gentle correction you were met with overt hostility?
The situation you describe is entirely inconceivable. I have knowingly had transgender people in my life for about two decades. I have never seen a "gentle correction" "met with overt hostility". I have only ever seen acrimony in explicit debate spaces, when people chose to make object-level examples of themselves for emotional appeal. And people simply do not "continuously" refer to other parties to the discussion in third person, at all.
> What is it that you say on a regular basis that makes you feel like you need to walk on eggshells?
For example, the things James Damore said, that resulted in his firing and which were blatantly misrepresented all over social media and journalism — to the point of people directly quoting things and then asserting that the quote means something other than its actual meaning.
> Never once, in all those years, have I ever feared for my job or felt excluded.
Not even when people assert that discrimination against your kind doesn't count as X-ism?
> Literally the only people I have ever heard complain are the ones I know for a fact tell racist and sexist jokes because they always felt comfortable enough around me to tell them. If the fact that we are a bit more mindful about being racist and sexist in the work place bothers you
You directly equivocate here. If they are telling racist and sexist jokes "around you", that is not doing so "in the work place". Moreover, if they "feel comfortable enough around you to tell them", that requires that you aren't objecting to it.
I've been working for 20 years, I've watched the landscape transform around me.
Those were jokes/comments made to me in the workplace back when it was more acceptable. Those same people went on to complain they couldn't do that anymore.
As for Damore, I'm not going to debate the merit of that memo. But even the NLRB thought he went beyond projected speech, saying his memo was "harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive"
I’m not willing to provide examples, because they would identify me. I’m not willing to identify myself because I’m not comfortable doing so.
Your response - “You're saying you feel excluded because you can't tell racist jokes?” - is a sufficient example of my point. Not only did I not imply that, but “racist jokes” aren’t even relevant to the conversation.
I refuse to defend myself against completely unfounded allegations.
For someone upset about having to worry about offending people in the workplace, you sure get offended easily.
I was primarily being hyperbolic. My main point is that generally people who are upset are upset that they can no longer say or do objectionable things in the workplace. Meanining every single person I have ever met in real life that complains about this stuff are the same ones who say horribly racist/misogynistic/homophobic stuff.
I'm asking, in all sincerity, what is one example of something you think is perfectly reasonable that you now have to avoid saying. Just one single example. I'd be thrilled if I could get one, because not only have I not seen one in this thread, but I have never seen one from anyone since this became a talking point years ago. It doesn't have to relate specifically to your workplace, you can generalize enough that it wouldn't be clear who you are or where you work.
> I'm asking, in all sincerity, what is one example of something you think is perfectly reasonable that you now have to avoid saying
At one point, one of my social media profile began with “Father, husband, […]” - basically a list of the things that are most important to me. I was berated online for this after responding to a post by someone by offering a suggestion to a technical problem. This was about a month before PyCon, and both I and that person were in attendance. They made reference to their “joke” in a very public way - at least two others who had participated in the thread online were there, and they laughed and continued to name the entire list that my profile contained.
To be clear - I was not inferring that they were making fun of me, this was in direct response to a question I had asked during the Q&A portion of a talk. They were loud enough that the speaker called for quiet because they were unable to hear the following question.
I attempted to file a complaint following the PSF process, and was told “since this happened off-site, there’s nothing we can do.”
The following day the same person referenced that someone had tried to attempted a complaint about them, calling it “fragile masculinity”.
There have been other instances, one of which was significantly more serious and resulted in a close friend of mine leaving software engineering as a career entirely. I will not share that one - there’s no benefit to doing so, it would hurt my friend if they were to be reminded of it, and it would very likely identify me.
It means that you were not really looking, because you could easily find examples that caused the chilling effect (even if it did not cause the firing, but a simple HR talk).
How about you check the content of DEI indoctrination classes, what constitutes offense? Like 2 people talking and the 3rd overhearing is a violation. Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation. Being against (the "wrong one") discrimination is a violation. Like communicating too much with a woman is a violation as is talking too little. Don't let me started on a microaggression BS. In general, it is a violation if any delusional person decides to be offended, no matter the reality.
Did you know that liking progress, efficiency, technology, as well as simply being on time is a core of white suppremacy culture that is improperly and racially being imposed on the Black population? Now that you know (like we estsblished, the opinion of only one minority person like myself is enough to make it a fact) that you are a racist, you must repent.
Your clear dishonesty and bad-faith acting is what causes people to not engage you, not the lack of examples.
I have taken the classes and it really isn't as hard to follow the guidelines as you seem to be painting it.
> Like 2 people talking and the 3rd overhearing is a violation
This is the principle that "locker-room talk" in the workplace is not okay, and that's a good principle. Yes, it's not okay to have a "just us guys" conversation because the content of the conversation is not acceptable in the workplace. The fact a third-party overhearing it gets it reported isn't the issue.
> Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation
You'll have to be more specific about what fantasies you mean. I'm pretty sure I know, but you are continuing to dance around it and your reluctance to name words strongly suggests you know your opinion is unwelcome in polite society.
> Being against (the "wrong one") discrimination is a violation
Again, you'll have to be more clear. Sounds like you're toeing the line Damore toed before Google fired him.
> Like communicating too much with a woman is a violation as is talking too little
Neither of these are violations, and I don't think I know how someone concludes they are.
> Don't [g]et me started on [] microaggression BS
Microaggression theory is grounded in research dating back to the 1970s. Do you have some specific concerns with the research or its interpretation? The theory seems pretty sound from where I sit, but maybe I've missed something.
> Did you know that liking progress, efficiency, technology, as well as simply being on time is a core of white suppremacy culture that is improperly and racially being imposed on the Black population?
That's not at all what anyone has said. You are misinterpreting several layers of information that suggest to me that your frustration is second-hand. I'm going to have to call for a "cite your sources" on this claim.
> In general, it is a violation if any delusional person decides to be offended, no matter the reality.
> Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation.
What does this even mean? Can you give me one specific concrete example of what you want to say in the workplace that you think will end up in a conversation with HR?
I have gone through literally all the same corporate training everyone else has for 20 years across 5 different companies. I have always worked in fairly diverse places, and have never once experienced what you're talking about.
No, people feel excluded because they are falsely accused of "telling racist jokes" when they objectively do nothing of the sort, meanwhile the people next to them are openly racist (and claim that they are not being racist because their actions are excluded by definition) without penalty.
Also as a reminder: in 2013 at PyCon, Adria Richards overheard people who weren't speaking to her and didn't know she was there, took offense to what they were saying, and ignored all official procedure to complain about it publicly on Twitter instead. That's why people were upset at her.
It might just be useless. Maybe 50% of woman are not as interested in the same topics as 50% of the man. Maybe it's ok and natural that man and woman have other talents / interests / perception / interpretation of things etc. Maybe we can appreciate our differences instead of forcefully trying to mold everything into the same shape?
These policies aren't about perfectly equal representation. It's about equal opportunity. That women you want to do the job get equal opportunities to men.
"Just asking questions" sounds innocent until you see that the questions being asked have insinuations behind them. He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
Phrasing outright racism/sexism in the form of a question seems to make it OK with other folks who tend to share the same mindset, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) effective in the workplace.
The devil doesn't need an advocate; especially not in a workplace.
> He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
His questions did not carry any such implication and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the argument he was making. I've been over this so many times in the past and I keep being told that the words I read don't mean what they very obviously mean. (I'm accustomed to that being called "gaslighting" when it goes the other way, inaccurate as that is.)
They quote the key points more or less accurately, although it must be noted that Damore's reference to "neuroticism" referenced an established concept in psychology and psychometrics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism); this does not correspond to a lay understanding, and it is simply factually incorrect to say that he described women as "more neurotic".
Note that Wikipedia endorses Damore's claim there: "A research [sic] over large samples has shown that levels of neuroticism are higher in women than men.[25]" Similarly, greater variability in male IQ is backed by research. Findings like these adequately support the core of Damore's argument, i.e. that disparate outcomes in race- and gender-blind processes do not evidence any form of unconscious bias and do not demonstrate any moral failing in the hiring process.
The NLRB's findings refer to a supposed "effort to cloak with 'scientific' references and analysis", scare quotes theirs, as if to imply that the findings are not backed by science or that appeals to science are being used fraudulently here. Both are false. Similarly, the NLRB claims that Damore invoked "stereotypes" (their word, not scare quotes) in presenting this analysis, which is also false.
The NLRB further supposes that remarks such as the ones they quoted, were somehow "discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment". I find the claim of discrimination specious. Observing that one population demonstrates a wider range of capability than another in certain standardized testing, is not discriminating against either group, especially when no claim is made about mean ability. As for "sexual harassment", I genuinely cannot understand how any reasonable person could ever have alleged this in good faith. There is no flirtation here, no attempt at intimidation, no intent to offend or degrade, nothing. What Damore said, objectively, was no more "sexist" than observing that men are taller than women on average (Cohen's d of 1.86, by the way: https://copernicanrevolution.org/psychology-of-gender/sex-di...). Putting this in the same category as unwanted sexual advances is beyond ludicrous.
The NLRB finally notes that "Numerous employees complained to the Employer that the memorandum was discriminatory against..." All people who made such complains were objectively incorrect in their assessment. The words cited, nor anything else in the memo, plainly do not support such a conclusion.
Essentially, they haven't actually done any "interpretation" here; they have simply made absurd assertions about the effect of the material, in support of absurd assertions made by Damore's coworkers — which assertions are based on a reading that is at best rendered inaccurate by ideological blinders.
I think a reasonable person can conclude that what Damore did was de-facto engaging in harmful stereotypes, even if he believed he was creating a grounded argument from science.
> As for "sexual harassment", I genuinely cannot understand how any reasonable person could ever have alleged this in good faith
"Since Suzy is a woman, she is more neurotic than Bob" is also sexual harassment, just in terms of legal definitions. Not all sexual harassment is of the "I want intercourse" kind.
> What Damore said, objectively, was no more "sexist" than observing that men are taller than women on average
So it turns out that if you go around saying "Well of course Suzy's short, she's a woman," that is sexual harrassment. And while Damore didn't single out any specific coworker, he made clear that he was approaching working with his colleagues from a framework that made assumptions about them based on gender, and that made working with him dicey (especially at Google, where management roles shift so fluidly).
I think a piece of the puzzle you're missing is this: the law doesn't always trust science. And the law has reason not to. Eugenics was a science. Phrenology was a science. Race essentialism was a science. Science hasn't always pointed the way towards truth in all cases, and the law's method of finding fact differs from the scientific method with good reason. If something's scientifically true and a Title VII violation... it's a Title VII violation.
> All people who made such complains were objectively incorrect in their assessment. The words cited, nor anything else in the memo, plainly do not support such a conclusion.
When nearly everyone in a population group is making the same claim about their own emotional state... Wouldn't the "reasonable person" principle conclude that, from a legal standpoint at least, the claim should be accepted true for a reasonable person in that population?
Just to sum up: I propose that people should be able to make statements they reasonably believe are true, where they proactively bring evidence and apply suitable disclaimers ("It was later updated with a preface affirming the author's opposition to workplace sexism and stereotyping.[19]"), and clearly have no intent to offend; and that it is not fair that they could lose their jobs over it when they say these things as part of explicitly solicited feedback.
I disagree, because I believe racists reasonably believe (as per their own framework) that racism is hard science. There is a nonzero amount of culture-shaping in the Civil Rights Act, and that was by design. It did draw a line in the sand and say "This category of behavior, regardless of its connection to or detachment from reality, is no longer acceptable, and we will use force of law to make it so."
Damore made the mistake of failing to realize that an American place of employment is not the agora. Given a couple opportunities to adjust his flight plan, he decided to stay the course. He was free to do so but he became a walking Title VII violation when he did and too much of a liability for Google to continue to employ.
On the plus side, I hear he landed on his feet so it all worked out in the end.
But in what way do you conclude that he is a racist? If you're just stating facts about the general differences between man and woman, and aren't necessarily making any conclusions about any particular person. In what step of the process do you say it becomes racist?
And I don't believe a reasonable person can conclude that someone believes things like "women score higher on the psychiatric test for neuroticism" and then sets that belief aside when evaluating the behavior or performance of women on their team.
What do you mean? There is a statistic that's been supposedly well studied, and it concludes some differences between woman and man. Now you say as soon as you accept that statistic, you cannot set that aside when you're evaluating individuals?
I mean, yeah of course, in a way statistics give us bias about everything. Just like a woke kind of bias will also affect someones perception. That's just always going on. But that doesn't mean we can't realise that every individual is unique, and can be a unique asset in a company / project / whatever?
I know I said I was done, but I do review my own comment history and what you've said (to a third party) here is so fallacious I feel compelled to interject.
Zeroth, statistical results like this are not at all like the "scientific racism" of the past. They are well accepted across a broad field of study and have shown themselves to be useful in understanding human behaviour. (Admittedly, a psychiatric evaluation is not a precise measurement. But it is not fundamentally based on a flawed assumption, and it is not being conducted by people with an axe to grind.)
First, OCEAN traits are basic material in psychology. By your argument, nobody with a relevant degree should be allowed to be employed anywhere; but they learn (not "believe") these things exactly because it makes them more qualified for their intended career path. It's the same as how doctors nowadays are expected to understand how culture mediates responses to pain, or how men's and women's health care facilities have proven themselves necessary (as has the need to disentangle what's caused by physiology or hormones from what's caused by psychology).
Second, Damore obviously understood the material he presented reasonably deeply. Nobody who looks into the psychiatric tests on that level would misunderstand what they mean. And, I mean, really, this is such an incredibly tangential thing to actual work. If I thought you belonged to a group with more propensity to self-doubt (I'm still not exactly being scientific here, but that's closer to what I've understood from my own reading), are you really saying that this would prevent me from fairly "evaluating your behaviour or performance"? The quality of your code doesn't change because of how you felt about it when you committed it.
Third, this is a claim that Damore fully understands as a statistical claim about the general population. He knows very well, and he makes it very clear that he knows very well, that this does not transfer to "women on one's team"; and furthermore he didn't argue that trait neuroticism makes people unfit for purpose (as above). The entire point of the argument is to explain why women disproportionately don't apply for the job, and thus relieve Google of the moral burden of correcting for that. (But he even offered suggestions for what they could do instead!)
Throughout all of that, Damore makes it abundantly clear what he's trying to debunk — the idea presented in the tl;dr: "Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression". If disparities in representation aren't caused by something purely external to the group (what "oppression" means), then they must be caused by something at least partially internal: i.e., a statistical group difference. And Damore is really making the mildest possible arguments about such differences. If you consider this objectionable, then logically you require everyone to believe that every group is statistically identical to every other group in every aspect except the one that defines the group (or at least: in every aspect relevant to performance in any job, etc.); that this is something that must be true a priori and cannot in principle be falsified even by actually doing the statistical work; and that disagreement is thoughtcrime. This is not a strawman; your argument requires this level of absolutism, because otherwise it is not fairly engaging with what Damore actually said.
> If I thought you belonged to a group with more propensity to self-doubt (I'm still not exactly being scientific here, but that's closer to what I've understood from my own reading), are you really saying that this would prevent me from fairly "evaluating your behaviour or performance"? The quality of your code doesn't change because of how you felt about it when you committed it.
Quality of code is by no means the only, or even dominant, evaluation metric for Google performance reviews. There is significant opportunity for bias in how those evaluations work, and that is by design; an engineer that puts out pristine code but shirks oncall duties, responds poorly in performance reviews, is hostile to their coworkers, or pushes blame while pulling credit, is not ready for higher ladder rungs. It's one of the reasons performance reiviews are done by peers, so that being stuffed in a team with a bad manager is less likely to hamstring one's career. But, that does mean that if you're on a team with someone perceived to be sexist (here, I mean "believes different sexes have different inherent natures of behavior"), it sows a lot of doubt in their ability to objectively evaluate you.
I don't think Damore intended to create an uncomfortable working environment, but he did, sadly.
There's an interesting book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter," that touches upon how higher education (in economics, in the case of that book) influences one's political views. Damore may not have been scientifically wrong, but if he's expected to keep working with people who haven't been read-in on the science and don't agree with it even when they are... He made a career-limiting mistake suggesting that the company's approach should pivot to that avenue of research's conclusions. I think he made the mistake honestly, but it was incompatible with his continued employment and he didn't back down when that was made clear.
To answer your question more directly: "Yes. If I were working with a coworker that I know has publicly and thoroughly quoted science that indicates men are categorically more impulsive than women and he gives me, a man, a bad performance review, I would wonder if he did because he doesn't think men have the self-control to make good leaders." That's the hostile work environment, sadly.
> He knows very well, and he makes it very clear that he knows very well, that this does not transfer to "women on one's team"
Two issues with this in practice:
1) If it doesn't transfer to women on one's team, then why was it relevant?
2) If it applies specifically to the general population, than why was it relevant? Google already isn't hiring from the general population.
If that's actually the argument he put on the table, he committed a category error that undermined the whole exercise, which makes it more suspicious when he doesn't back down.
> If you consider this objectionable, then logically you require everyone to believe that every group is statistically identical to every other group in every aspect except the one that defines the group (or at least: in every aspect relevant to performance in any job, etc.); that this is something that must be true a priori and cannot in principle be falsified even by actually doing the statistical work; and that disagreement is thoughtcrime.
You have the meat of the situation yes. Title VII does make that assumption, and does not tolerate working protected-category differences into how employees are treated. I believe Damore was trying to make an argument merely regarding Google's diversification initiatives, but the argument he made had immediate implications for the current workforce (it's not like individuals from the categories with the personality traits Damore's manifesto suggests magically stop being of that category when they are hired, and I think reasonable people made that inference whether it was intended). There is a non-specious argument to make that the Civil Rights Act is behind the science (although, as I've noted previously, any claim it is should be treated with maximum scrutiny given where "the science" has led society in the past in this problem domain).
... but it is the law of the land, and as consequence, one cannot be "just asking questions" about protected categories in an employment environment without career risk.
> To answer your question more directly: "Yes. If I were working with a coworker that I know has publicly and thoroughly quoted science that indicates men are categorically more impulsive than women and he gives me, a man, a bad performance review, I would wonder if he did because he doesn't think men have the self-control to make good leaders." That's the hostile work environment, sadly.
1. Okay. So the psychologists deserve a lifetime of unemployment for daring to choose that major. Understood.
2. This is, as far as I can tell, the same form of argument as: "Yes. If I were working at a company that I know has publicly discussed and implemented DEI policies that argue for hiring people on the basis of traits other than their ability to do the job, and I saw a coworker do a bad job, I would wonder if that coworker were an unqualified 'diversity hire'." This is, to my understanding, one of the arguments that got Charlie Kirk shot; as it's one of the ones people cite when trying to justify the shooting.
But that argument is more coherent, because it considers the effect of hiring policy on hiring, rather than the effect of statistical traits of the general population on hiring. And because it considers job performance as evidence of job aptitude, rather than misrepresenting a statistical difference as a "categorical" one and then making an interpretation about personality traits as they correspond to job aptitude. (Part of the memo was specifically about how to prevent personality traits from interfering with job aptitude, coming from a belief that they don't inherently.)
> one cannot be "just asking questions" about protected categories
Again: his feedback was explicitly solicited. It is extraordinarily unjust to solicit feedback but punish people for saying things you don't want to hear. This is in fact a hallmark of the sorts of authoritarian regimes Damore complained about.
> it's not like individuals from the categories with the ... traits ... magically stop being of that category when they are hired
No, but if the trait is relevant to job performance, then they do stop having that trait when they are hired, because the hiring process filters for it. That's the point. Damore repeatedly, explicitly stated throughout the memo that such stereotyping is inappropriate. It represents ignoring evidence you already have. "You are in a group that tends to X, therefore you are X" is false logic that Damore calls out as false logic. It is being projected onto him by the complainants. Reasonable people did not make that inference, because the inference is not reasonable — because it is not backed by logic, nor is it compatible with the principle of charity that is expected of reasonable people. Coming to these sorts of conclusions requires many unreasonable acts, such as repeatedly ignoring explicit disclaimers.
> So the psychologists deserve a lifetime of unemployment for daring to choose that major.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." People who have studied psychology and wish to work in an American workplace are welcome to do so. If they suggest modern psychological science indicates that Title VII is based on flawed reasoning and their coworkers have reason to believe they will act on that belief in an official capacity, that creates a hostile work environment. American businesses are not the places to lab-test OCEAN trait averages as policy guidance.
You have stated several times that Damore stated that wasn't his intent. I know he stated that (sidebar: one of the reasons this topic triggers my interest is I was there). I think, unfortunately for him, his protests failed the credibility test, fair or unfair that may be. He hadn't earned a benefit of the doubt from his colleagues (to be fair to him, "colleagues" is a very wide net the way Google organized itself back then; they were still acting like a small company in terms of organization when they employed over 50,000 people, and I think the experience with Damore was a nail in the coffin for their "big company with small-company ideals" model).
> publicly discussed and implemented DEI policies that argue for hiring people on the basis of traits other than their ability to do the job
I've seen this criticism in a couple of dimensions and I won't claim it doesn't happen, but (perhaps surprisingly) I agree with you to an extent. I'm not in favor of hiring people who can't do the job because they have other traits. Broadly speaking though, DEI initiatives are predicated on the core notion that most candidates are actually interchangeable, and if you don't back-stop in your company culture regular human biases, companies will hire more people who look, act, and think like them over equally-qualified people from different backgrounds. That's not the same thing as intentionally hiring unqualified people for a role; for most roles, strict stack-ranking of candidates is actually impossible because the responsibility domain is too broad.
> Again: his feedback was explicitly solicited
You are 100% correct, and I think Google as an org learned a valuable lesson about message channels in this story. There is also the dimension worth noting that the decision to keep it in house was taken out of both Google and Damore's hands because someone leaked the whole topic to the public, which thoroughly tied Google's hands; Damore's conduct in the public eye read worse than it did internally, so Google was faced with significant blow-back if they decided to go to bat for the guy at that point. It is entirely possible one of his coworkers did that on purpose, and that can be interpreted as malicious (... on the other hand, if the story is "Once the public knew about it, Google couldn't do anything but fire him..." Maybe the conduct was firing-worthy? All subsequent formal inquiry seems to concur it was).
> Reasonable people did not make that inference, because the inference is not reasonable
I think you make a reasonable case here, but unfortunately, I don't think the public agrees and we end up on the rocks of "reasonable person principle" again. If most of the public's interpretation doesn't fit the "reasonable person" standard, democracy as an experiment is a bit failed, yeah?
> such as repeatedly ignoring explicit disclaimers.
If you believe the disclaimers, you arrive at different conclusions than if you don't. Sadly for Mr. Damore, I think most people just didn't.
> I think a reasonable person can conclude that what Damore did was de-facto engaging in harmful stereotypes, even if he believed he was creating a grounded argument from science.
No, a reasonable person cannot do so, because this is a matter of fact. This conclusion is incompatible with what the word "stereotype" means. Objectively, an empirically backed statistical trend is not a stereotype. Again, this is like using the word" stereotype to describe the statement "on average, men are taller than women".
It is not a question of Damore believing he was creating a grounded argument from science. It is a question of the objective fact that he was doing so.
> And while Damore didn't single out any specific coworker, he made clear that he was approaching working with his colleagues from a framework that made assumptions about them based on gender
No. His framework does not "make assumptions about them", i.e. about individuals. It highlights things that are known to be true as statistical patterns. He was explicit in noting that he does not use these statistics to prejudge people, for example:
> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
He was explicit that his purpose in highlighting the statistics is to refute an argument he saw being made that a disparate outcome evidenced a bias. He offered an alternate explanation for the outcome.
To say that this is wrong is to say, in effect, that he is not allowed to hold the view, never mind express it. And it is to say that no refutation of the argument presented could be tolerated.
That is not how healthy discussion works. And as I recall, Damore's feedback was part of a program explicitly soliciting this sort of feedback.
Also notable, Damore also claimed (again correctly, again backed by statistical evidence) that women show on average higher openness and extraversion (other OCEAN traits) on the same studies where they show higher neuroticism. Nobody objected to that. Because the objection was rooted in emotional affect and a knee-jerk reaction to a word without understanding the underlying concept or caring about the evidence presented.
> Wouldn't the "reasonable person" principle conclude that,
I don't see why:
> In law, a reasonable person or reasonable man is a hypothetical person whose character and care conduct, under any common set of facts, is decided through reasoning of good practice or policy.[1][2]
I don't agree that the people in question were conducting themselves in anything like that manner.
> His questions did not carry any such implication and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the argument he was making.
I also read through this in-depth at the time, and yeah, he definitely did carry such implication. Hiding it through quoting bad science doesn't aid his cause.
He's a racist and a sexist, and he's just good at doing in a quasi-grey area, so that other racists can rally behind him. It's effectively the alt-right playbook, as the alt-right is just a "more commercially friendly KKK".
> and yeah, he definitely did carry such implication.
I have read through it many times. Such inferences require wilful misinterpretation.
If you disagree, please feel free to email me for further discussion. I use this username, on the Proton email service (specifically the one with a two-letter TLD).
> Hiding it through quoting bad science doesn't aid his cause.
The science he cited is not bad; it is well accepted in the relevant fields. For example, the "people vs things orientation" point is general knowledge in the field; it's a highly reproducible result with one of the largest effect sizes in all of behavioural science (see e.g. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-..., section 2).
> He's a racist and a sexist
The memo does not describe, or attempt to describe, any form of racial difference, whether hypothetical or measured. The only mentions of race are in reference to the existing Google policy, which is unavoidable insofar as that policy explicitly takes race into consideration. There is not even a remotely plausible basis for describing anything written here as racist, and you reasonably ought to understand this from your claimed "in-depth" reading.
> he's just good at doing in a quasi-grey area,
There is nothing "quasi-grey" about it except among people who are looking for a reason to misinterpret it. As an objective matter of fact he did not say the harmful things attributed to him.
> so that other racists can rally behind him. It's effectively the alt-right playbook, as the alt-right is just a "more commercially friendly KKK".
This is completely unfounded assassination of character which does nothing except to reveal your own biases.
> There is not even a remotely plausible basis for describing anything written here as racist
The fact that plenty of people disagree with you doesn't support your argument.
It feels like you're being defensive here because you agree with his rhetoric and you don't want to consider yourself sexist or racist, because "that makes you a bad person". You can have racist, sexist thoughts, and maybe in other cases still generally be good in your actions. This doesn't define your core being, even if you still have hateful thoughts. You'll never be able to improve yourself if you're unwilling to have your beliefs challenged.
> This is completely unfounded assassination of character which does nothing except to reveal your own biases.
He's become a hero of the alt-right, specifically because his approach to this aligns with their playbook. It's not character assassination, it's truth. He's trying to phrase things in a palatable way, but his underlying message is that minorities and women don't belong in tech.
Though he said he doesn't support the alt-right, he went on a media tour after being fired, on alt-right platforms. This is also something that generally aligns with alt-right playbooks. Distance yourself in speech, but not in action.
> The fact that plenty of people disagree with you doesn't support your argument.
First off, no, you are the only one in the discussion who brought up any charge of racism.
Second, no, this is blatant argumentum ad populum fallacy.
Third, the fact that you apparently refuse to cite anything from the memo is telling. I know that you cannot cite anything from the memo to support a charge of racism because I have read the memo and it contains nothing that can support a charge of racism even in your ideological framework.
If you disagree, quote the part that you think does so. I will be happy to explain why it does not.
> It feels like you're being defensive here because you agree with his rhetoric and you don't want to consider yourself sexist or racist, because "that makes you a bad person".
I am correctly pointing out that he said nothing wrong, because I agree with what he said. I am not sexist or racist; those qualities are moral failings, and therefore having them does make someone a bad person. There is objectively nothing sexist or racist about what was said, and therefore objectively nothing sexist or racist about agreeing with it. I have carefully explained why, repeatedly, throughout the thread.
I am not "being defensive", as that term implies a feeling of guilt. I feel no guilt, because I have done nothing wrong, and believe nothing wrong. I feel annoyance, because you are trying to tell me objectively incorrect things that you reasonably ought to know are incorrect, and because you are attacking an innocent person (Damore) whom I care about (at least on a philosophical level).
> You can have racist, sexist thoughts, and maybe in other cases still generally be good in your actions. This doesn't define your core being, even if you still have hateful thoughts. You'll never be able to improve yourself if you're unwilling to have your beliefs challenged.
It comes across that you say this with the intent of "giving me an out", but really it just comes across as condescending. The only "hateful thoughts" I have in this regard are towards a) those who promote an altered, unjust definition of "sexism" and "racism" in order to rationalize harmful, sexist, racist, morally incorrect policies like DEI; b) those who make false presumptions about my mental state.
I have "had my beliefs challenged" constantly by people like you for well over a decade. "Having one's beliefs challenged" does not entail changing them. "Improving oneself" does not entail agreeing with your viewpoint, either. It entails refining one's ability to reject it. Because it is incorrect.
> He's become a hero of the alt-right, specifically because his approach to this aligns with their playbook. It's not character assassination, it's truth. He's trying to phrase things in a palatable way, but his underlying message is that minorities and women don't belong in tech.
> Though he said he doesn't support the alt-right, he went on a media tour after being fired, on alt-right platforms. This is also something that generally aligns with alt-right playbooks. Distance yourself in speech, but not in action.
All of this is complete unfounded nonsense, repeatedly and directly contradicted by what Damore actually said. You have not read the memo. You have looked at the memo, pulled out some words, and come to a conclusion driven by your own ideological biases. But your understanding of the meaning is objectively incorrect. What you are doing here is roughly equivalent to reading someone say "on average, men are taller and physically stronger than women" and saying "get a load of this person, who apparently doesn't think women should play sports". And then also extending the point to "minorities", based on absolutely nothing at all.
(If you dispute the claim that men are on average taller and physically stronger than women, please feel free to cite your studies.)
> "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article."
Damore's memo is not an article in this sense and it especially is not what OP submitted.
> "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
Why do you present this criticism to someone who offers evidence, but not to the other party, who is making assertions directly contradicted by the evidence for the purpose of character assassination? How is it not "political or ideological battle" to accuse someone, without evidence and in clear contradiction of available evidence, of being a "hero of the alt-right" who is following their "playbook"?
Further: I explicitly offered to continue the conversation by email instead. I received no email, and received a comment reply. It is not fair or reasonable to castigate me for replying.
Further: this subthread started with scuff3d making the sarcastic remark "God forbid they stand up for people and fight for an inclusive work environment. How dare they!", uncharitably representing someone else's position and clearly intending "political or ideological battle". This then allowed for you to introduce Damore as a topic, in proposing that someone else's entirely reasonable positions were somehow harmful and implicitly justifying that they should have gotten Damore fired, an ideological position unrelated to the PSF except insofar as the underlying ideology is treated as a topic.
The paid staff are, broadly speaking, the ones enforcing the rules (and making PyCon happen). Almost all the actual development is on a volunteer basis, with people operating remotely and submitting PRs to GitHub (where the only people who ever act unprofessional are annoyed bug reporters). What "work environment"?
Software quality has been on a downhill trend that's steepened noticeably in the past ~15 years. Doesn't take a genius to put two and two together and see what's really happening but they'd rather we ignore the politically inconvenient elephant in the room.
Your downvotes don't matter, we see the truth regardless.
Please put two and two together for the rest of us clowns who can’t quite figure it out. State your beliefs plainly so we can come up with some solutions.
No, it's the focus on whatever rainbow-coloured culture war crap that has nothing to do with software engineering that's creating a distraction and allowing incompetence to thrive.
I don't care if developers are cis trans black white male female or dogs[1] if they are competent. But there seems to be a recent trend of some who cry discrimination when their sub-par work is called out.
> But there seems to be a recent trend of some who cry discrimination when their sub-par work is called out.
This sounds like you worked with or heard about 1 trans person who did shoddy work and now it's a "recent trend" that all trans software devs are saying it's discrimination.
Yeah, it's usually white guys complaining that they got passed over for some trans person or whatever who insist that there's discrimination when they get called out for sub-par work.
I actually think that part of the increased prevalence of trans women (i.e. AMAB people who identify as women) in the software industry, is AMAB people who would otherwise be considered men for DEI purposes changing their own conception of their own gender in a way that would make them be counted as women for DEI purposes. I don't think this is the only thing driving gender transition in a general sense, but I know a fair number of trans women and other AMAB genderqueer people in programming-adjacent spaces, and I suspect that the general cultural currents that incentivize gender-based DEI programs also affect people who are otherwise gender-questioning in some fashion.
----
"The doctors are sympathetic, and I think some of them even understand—regardless, they can offer no solace beyond the chemical. They are too kind to resent, but my envy is palpable. One, a trans woman, is especially gentle; perhaps because her own frustrations mirror mine, our cognitive distance sabotaging her authenticity."
- https://ctrlcreep.substack.com/p/knowing-ones-place
So your assertion is that trans people, gay people, people of color, and women are inherently worse at engineering jobs then straight white men, and companies/institutions that hire them are somehow producing worse software? Ignoring all other economic and technological trends that have materialized over the last two decades?
Also, just for the record, some of the most brilliant engineers I have worked with in my time fall into many of those categories.
Jumping in here. Nobody (or almost nobody) is saying that these demographics are inherently worse engineers. But the policies to promote them are inherently discriminatory. You can't promote people based on what they look like without compromising on other attributes like skill. There are companies out there literally saying "We need less white people" and listing off every possible demographic as "welcome" except for white men, in the job posting.
I remember attending a company meeting a few years ago where our Chief People Officer announced in front of everyone that a new C-level role was open to run our IT organization and that it was exclusively open to women of color.
I remember thinking to myself: "Woah, that's not only extremely illegal but also I potentially would qualify for such a role without said requirement. I wish I'd recorded that."
The person they hired ended up being a disaster in the two years she was with us and she hired an entire organization underneath her that was exclusively of her own ethnicity...and I don't mean her country but her own ethnic group within that country.
In some countries they've tried to mandate that some percentage of the executive board or C-level is women. That should be illegal. Businesses want the best people for the job. If women were actually discriminated against, a competitor could scoop them all up and make major profits. It's all political theater to get female votes at the expense of men and society as a whole.
> California passed Senate Bill 826 in October 2018, mandating gender diversity on the boards of public companies headquartered in California. The bill set deadlines in 2019 (for two women on five-person boards) and 2021 (for three women on seven-person boards).[66] It was challenged as unconstitutional on the grounds of violating equal protection.[67] The District Court ruled the challengers did not have standing, but was overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The District Court then denied a preliminary injunction. It is now pending another appeal.[68] A separate lawsuit found the law unconstitutional on May 13, 2022.[69]
> In 2020, California passed Assembly Bill 979, requiring publicly held companies headquartered in California to include board members from underrepresented communities. The law requires at least one director from an underrepresented community by the end of 2021, and up to three, depending on board size, by the end of 2022.[70] The term "underrepresented community" is defined as "an individual who self‑identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self‑identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender."[71] The law was ruled unconstitutional on April 1, 2022.
Every single one of these policies that I've seen over the last 20 years, including my role as a hiring manager in my past career, were aimed at leveling the playing field and providing equal opportunities to people who aren't in the majority. The only effect I've seen is that now people who look like me actually have to compete with others.
Edit: For the record I'm asking for links from reputable companies who would realistically be setting the tone for the industry. Not some random ass listing for contract work.
Other companies I can think of are Google and Microsoft. Many huge open-source projects have openly promoted specific racial outcomes. I might dig up links later but if you actually care about this stuff, Lunduke is a great source of references.
>Every single one of these policies that I've seen over the last 20 years, including my role as a hiring manager in my past career, were aimed at leveling the playing field and providing equal opportunities to people who aren't in the majority.
That is how it's sold, but in practice it means you have to turn down perfectly good white people (especially white men) to get arbitrary demographic outcomes. If 13% of the population is black and almost none of them study engineering, you won't be able to get 13% representation without passing up on better white candidates. The same can be said about women and other minorities. Different demographics have different preferences and that is reflected in what they study and how hard they work at it. Yet we are supposed to think there is something nefarious if there is even a minor discrepancy in outcomes. Give me a break. This isn't the 1950s. Nobody would risk discriminating against a minority because it could cause a lawsuit. But discrimination against whites and men is not treated the same way, even when it can be proved positively. One of those 3 lawsuits against IBM was dismissed by an activist judge with a one-sentence non-explanation for example. If you complain about this stuff publicly your career is going to be damaged and everyone will at best think you are a bad sport.
You're specific statement was that companies were listing job postings saying white men weren't welcome. I don't see any evidence of that.
I'm going to try very very hard to ignore the fact it was James O'Keefe that "broke" that story. He's only one step above Info Wars when it comes to being a reliable source, and it's well established he doctors videos to fit his narrative.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that IBM did do something illegal here: they deserve to be sued and the person who was discriminated against is entitled to some kind of compensation (regardless of race/gender). But that's hardly evidence of some grand conspiracy against white men.
But maybe we can approach this conversation from a different angle. You clearly have a different view from me, so let's try to build up from some common starting place
Would you say it's a reasonable assertion that someone born into immense wealth and privilege (regardless of race/gender/sexual orientation) has substantially more opportunities in their life then someone born in abject poverty?
>You're specific statement was that companies were listing job postings saying white men weren't welcome. I don't see any evidence of that.
Sorry, I don't have time to satisfy arbitrary demands like this. Job postings are ephemeral anyway. There have been articles written about this but I don't have links, and the way you're coming at me tells me you will never be satisfied.
>I'm going to try very very hard to ignore the fact it was James O'Keefe that "broke" that story. He's only one step above Info Wars when it comes to being a reliable source, and it's well established he doctors videos to fit his narrative.
O'Keefe did not originate this story. Lunduke gets a number of leaks himself. If you expect these maverick journalists to be well-liked, you're being totally unreasonable.
>But for the sake of argument, let's assume that IBM did do something illegal here: they deserve to be sued and the person who was discriminated against is entitled to some kind of compensation (regardless of race/gender). But that's hardly evidence of some grand conspiracy against white men.
CEOs of companies saying out in the open that they want more "representation" and that there are bonuses for hiring minorities not good enough? There are billions of dollars being spent specifically to attack whites and white men specifically, and to discourage whites from forming families. I'm not going to argue with you on this point. This should be rather obvious.
>Would you say it's a reasonable assertion that someone born into immense wealth and privilege (regardless of race/gender/sexual orientation) has substantially more opportunities in their life then someone born in abject poverty?
I know exactly where you want to take this and let me stop you right there. Would you agree that, assuming we are allocating financial assistance to poor people, that all equally poor people are equally deserving of help regardless of what they look like, or what is between their legs, or who they like to sleep with?
Anything that tries to blame present-day whites for crimes of the past is effectively collective punishment. Meanwhile, you can't even extract retribution from the children of convicted criminals at present, yet we are supposed to take the blame for a few individuals in the past based on the mere fact that they look like us? There is no evidence of widespread collusion against minorities at present. To the very limited extent you might argue that, I could argue that people of other demographics prefer their own consistently.
I don't actually want to continue this discussion lol. It's too tedious and I don't expect to convince you of anything based on how you write. But hopefully some of what I've said will lead you to reconsider some of your mainstream beliefs.
It's not an assumption, it's what the law says. In the US, in Canada and in every other sufficiently advanced nation.
If you disagree, it's because you disagree about what "level" means.
It's as the other poster says:
> There are companies out there literally saying "We need less white people" and listing off every possible demographic as "welcome" except for white men, in the job posting.
When you do this, the playing field is ipso facto not level. When you "welcome" people regardless of demographic characteristics, and refuse to take these characteristics into consideration in the hiring process the playing field is ipso facto level.
The law can say all kinds of things that aren't (scientifically) true. We can pass a law that says the sun revolves around the Earth, and it's legally true if we do.
I'd think if our backstop for understanding if a level playing field was created by the law is the law, we'd want to verify the claim by external signal such as outcome observation if we aspire to some objective assessment.
The law required you not to discriminate on the basis of sex etc.
I am the one saying that this is inherently fair, and that doing so produces a definitionally level playing field.
Because that's just true. That's how fairness works. Fairness is when you don't discriminate on the basis of things (here, race, sex etc.) irrelevant to the decision you're trying to make (here, suitability for the position). Bias is when you do.
Your definition of fairness suggests that when someone is born poor, suffers, and dies poor, and someone is born rich, gets to enjoy all the things wealth brings a person in life, and dies rich, even though they did nothing in particular to earn their station in life... That's fair.
I think civilizations have been struggling for several centuries with whether that's good enough. We are, in fact, coming up on the Christmas season for those who celebrate, and there's a pretty good story an Englishman wrote in the 1800s on this topic. Something about three spirits visiting and what a man's life comes to, even when he plays by every single written rule.
(You're hitting the nail on the head. Equality of opportunity vs. equality of possible outcome is the division in philosophy in this space. Are you familiar with the thought experiment Lyndon B. Johnson spoke of in 1965 about a relay race where the runners have unequal starting lines?)
> Your definition of fairness suggests that when someone is born poor, suffers, and dies poor, and someone is born rich, gets to enjoy all the things wealth brings a person in life, and dies rich, even though they did nothing in particular to earn their station in life... That's fair.
No. I said nothing of the sort.
What I said is that when those things happen, and then an employer disregards that history in the course of making a hiring assessment, the employer acted fairly.
It is not incumbent upon the employer to attempt to right prior injustices. It is in fact wrong to expect the employer to do so. Because the employer did not cause them.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
I am done with this discussion, in all sub-threads, because this is clearly going no where.
You didn't say it directly; your definition suggests it as a logical inference.
> The law required you not to discriminate on the basis of sex etc.
> I am the one saying that this is inherently fair
So if most men start on a playing field where they are wealthier and most women on one where they are poorer, a level playing field will tend to maintain that level of inequality, will it not? And by your definition that would e fair.
In fact, there'd be an interesting observable consequence of this scenario: were it truly level, one could begin to observe population-level phenomena like "women are just poorer; that's innate to them" and be correct in observation but with an error in causality; it's not so much "innate" as "initial conditions coupled with a lack of mobility."
If it were initial conditions and a lack of mobility... An un-level playing field would encourage more mobility, would it not? And if you made it un-level in the right way, perhaps you could start to zero out those initial-conditions effects?
There have always even been black women developers, perhaps not as many as the DEI-brainwashed would like, but that's fine because they're actually competent regardless of who they are.
The narrative that DEI causes unqualified people to be hired is just false fear-mongering.
I’ve been on several university hiring committees and the guidelines were always “if two candidates are equally qualified 1. Hire the veteran 2. Hire the minority” if a hiring committee chooses an unqualified individual to do a job that’s on them.
No proponent of DEI I’ve ever talked to in real life has said we should hire unqualified people to meet some quota.
Not true. Work for a large public tech multinational. We had a several year run where every time we tried to hire onto our team, HR would force severely unqualified people into our interview pipeline. Then after they failed the interview HR would stress that we should strongly consider hiring the person on DEI grounds. We don't do technical interviews on culture fit -- we've gone through significant effort to make sure our interviews are objective and generate good signal regardless of background.
None of these were junior positions, they were all basically senior and staff engineer positions, based on the nature/criticality of the work. We had to interview a wide variety of people all of whom had never had a professional software engineering role before and some who didn't even speak a language shared by any members on our team.
That could equally mean people of color were disproportionately laid off during COVID. I find it meaningless without any breakdown of what those hires were or any other factors that would help determine the base rate. If this and hand-waving about 'DEI is the context you need' is your whole argument, you're bad at statistics and analysis.
> "Major companies added more than 320,000 jobs to their U.S. workforces in 2021, and 94% of those went to people of color, according to Bloomberg."
Searching for the quoted sentence found a NewsNation article. The NewsNation article linked the Bloomberg article.[1]
The quoted sentence could create an impression 6% of newly hired workers were white. This would be incorrect. 2021 was the time of the Great Resignation. People who stopped working were older and white disproportionately. Both articles mentioned this. But not so clearly.
The Bloomberg article said 2021 hiring included hiring back people the companies laid off in 2020. The jobs eliminated in 2020 were lower paying jobs disproportionately. And the workers affected were non white disproportionately.
Amazon added over 200,000 jobs. This was over 60% of the total. Most were warehouse workers and drivers. Do you believe Amazon had diversity quotas for warehouse workers and drivers?
Both articles said remote work changed where companies hired people. Do you believe they did this for diversity or money?
Bloomberg's charts illustrated some of the problems of reducing the data to 1 or 2 numbers even if you ignore resignation. Nike decreased white people at all levels. This was because they decreased jobs at their Oregon headquarters. CVS's professional, managerial, and executive jobs hiring appeared to favor white people. Amazon's professional hiring appeared to favor Asian people.
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