
Google employee fired over diversity row considers legal action - kafkaesq
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-employee-fired-diversity-row-considers-legal-action-james-damore
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chippy
Reasonably well written article. I heard a similar news item on BBC's World
Service. Is it something about Britain/Europe news which lends some
perspective or is it a function of literal distance?

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IanDrake
You're kidding right? It's full of mischaracterizations.

>suggesting women are less suited to certain roles in tech and leadership

Not true. Saying women are less suited is saying all women are less suited.

What he said is that when comparing the distribution curve of women to men,
the average woman may be less suited than the average man.

That's different. It means that the top 10% of women may be far _better_
suited to leadership in tech than the bottom 85% of men.

>caused outrage when he circulated a manifesto at the weekend complaining
about Google’s “ideological echo chamber”

He wrote a memo. It was posted on an internal forum. He wasn't complaining, he
was suggesting alternatives to discrimination. Why are they making it sound
like he was distributing fliers all over campus?

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neo4sure
Great, let him go to court and defend his thesis. Why don't all the sexist
guys get together and form your own organization and let's see how you survive
in this world?

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hi1234567890
Question to everyone. 1: Do you think forced diversity is a good thing? Is it
an attack on those with ability? 2: Is this a variant of the PC movement? Do
you consider this an attack on free speech?

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ThemalSpan
1.) It's not so simple. There are social mechanisms at play that will lead to
a segregated workforce if we do not combat them. In today's world it takes
effort to maintain a diverse workforce. As as to whether its a good thing, I
think that a) diversity of people means diversity of ideas and solutions, and
b) diversity in workers helps combat some of the social mechanisms that would
keep the workforce segregated. It is also of the uptmost importance to note
that raising diversity in the workforce is orthogonal to compromising on the
quality of workers.

2.) Yonatan Zunger's response to the manifesto has been highly shared, but I
think his essay "Tolerance is not a moral precept" is an important framework
when talking about this issue. The basic premise is that by adopting tolerance
as a social norm, we are not agreeing to also tolerate intolerance. Companies
like Google have set out the edict that all their workers should be treated
with respect. By questioning the inate abilities of a large portion of the
workforce, the manifesto's author is doing great damage to the attitude of
tolerance that allows Google to operate. He isn't be prosecuted by the
government, but he is necessarily being expunged from an enviromenent that he
is incompatible with.

