
Facebook manager quit after being 'harassed' over views on diversity - allsunny
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/17/facebook-manager-quits-after-being-harassed-over-views-on-diversity.html
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RcouF1uZ4gsC
>“I want to spend my time at a place willing to push further on diversity and
inclusion. One where it’s not OK to write on Workplace that white privilege
doesn’t exist.”

As a person of color, I would be very happy if it became policy to never use
the phrase “white privilege” inside a workplace.

First of all it is making a blanket statement about an entire group of people.
Saying <race> <attribute> is problematic as a principle.

Second, this too close for comfort to “white supremacy” for me. Both phrases
describe white people as having a superiority to other races through the
virtue of their whiteness.

Third, the phrase alienates people and makes them defensive. Most people can
agree that having an environment where everyone can achieve their best is
important. However, when you use words that cast people and their families as
the villains and imply that they are not as deserving of what they earned as
other people, then you turn them into your enemies.

I understand the phrase is trying to emphasize the historic and ongoing
injustices against people of color. However, I think Trevor Noah’s phrase
“black tax” is much more useful. This puts the focus on removing barriers and
disadvantages, rather than on trying to remove someone’s “privilege”.

~~~
purple_ducks
Not being American (and not being from a European country that colonised), I
think POC is misleading as people of Asian descent don't seem to be nearly as
stigmatised as people of African descent.

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protomyth
Heck, I would like Facebook to start hiring some enrolled tribal members so we
can stop seeing accounts closed for having fake names. Just an FYI to any
Facebook employee, the last names Good Iron, Yellow Horse, Walking Eagle, and
Flute Player are an actual family names. I would welcome some diversity when
talking about your customers.

~~~
ryanmonroe
Better yet, stop checking for "real" names. If I use something as a name of
Facebook, it's because that's what I want to go by. What does it matter what's
on my birth certificate?

~~~
purple_ducks
Even better, let users choose whatever but have _every_ user account backed by
a (not publically displayed) verified government ID.

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tippecanoe
According to this article, Facebook is "still largely white."

According to Facebook, in 2018 46.6% of their US staff identified as white and
41.4% identified as Asian (50.3% percent of US technical staff identify as
Asian vs 42.7% who identify as white.)

[https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-
report](https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report)

------
deogeo
> One where if I call out that our board has too many white men

With only 1 woman on facebook's board of 9, men are considerably over-
represented. But white people are not.

The board has 5 non-hispanic white people, 3 jewish, and 1 black. US
demographics for those groups are 60%, 1.77%, and 12.6%.

This means white people are 92% represented, black 88%, and jewish 1880%.

~~~
lazyasciiart
"Jewish" and "white" are not considered to be mutually exclusive. It's very
odd to see that categorization. Why do you group them like that?

~~~
justtopost
How are the jewish people 'white'? Are black people white? Arabs? How are YOU
drawing the line?

~~~
paganel
Most of the Ashkenazi Jews are certainly white, as in they have white skin.
I’d say that even the Sephardic Jews would be considered white based on their
skin color alone. But categorizing people by skin color is one of the
stupidest things ever, though, as I for myself am white (as in I have white
skin) while my brother is more brownish, the reason for that being that our
father is white-skinned while our mother is more dark-skinned.

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ng12
Well, what did she write? How did she "criticize the lack of diversity"? I
feel like it's a non-story without detailing what she wrote and what the
backlash was.

~~~
mlindner
That's the key piece of information that's missing here. If you start
complaining constantly about things not related to your job then yes you're
going to be an earsore.

~~~
beaugunderson
part of what she wrote is in the article:

> I want to spend my time at a place willing to push further on diversity and
> inclusion. One where it's not OK to write on Workplace that white privilege
> doesn't exist. One where if I call out that our board has too many white
> men, I don't get harassed by other employees on Blind with transphobic
> messages saying I should be fired.

workplace harassment is certainly related to one's job...

~~~
ng12
> One where it's not OK to write on Workplace that white privilege doesn't
> exist

For some reason Sillicon Valley missed out on a "golden rule" that exists
everywhere else -- do not talk about personal politics at work. I don't see
someone denying white privilege as a problem so much as the fact that such
discussions were happening using company resources on company time.

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xiphias2
There may be lot of problems with diversity in Facebook, but you can't really
be harassed on Blind: it's all about getting real raw opinions. If you don't
want that, don't use Blind.

~~~
toss1
Obviously, the comments on Blind are not direct harassment, as you are not
expected to read them, or can obviously choose not to read them.

The point is that it provides: __hard data about the whispering campaign going
on behind your back, the conversations from which you are excluded.

 __that the harassment does actually exist, and is not a mere allegation by
you being paranoid.

 __that other people can go verify the hostile attitudes and expressions for
themselves.

 __provides real, externally verifiable evidence of problems at facebook, not
coming merely from the famous "disgruntled ex-employee"

Stop trying to minimize serious issues (and if you do want to minimize them,
at least make sound points that are better than trivial sophistry, a half step
up from complaining about typos).

~~~
CydeWeys
And it provides a mechanism for people to spread lies about you and
collaborate against you. You can't simply turn a blind eye to this stuff; it
does affect you, whether you read it or not.

~~~
xiphias2
Lies are a bad thing, but in this case if you read what people wrote she
probably went too far and hurt people who had no other way to defend
themselves, but to organize againt her. Also mass lies are hard to do with
Blind, as you can't just register 100 users, there are real people working at
big companirs behind each user, that's why I like it so much.

~~~
fzeroracer
This is probably one of the more absurd takes I've read, since it's
essentially saying that the harassers are somehow the real victims in this
situation.

~~~
xiphias2
Why can't there be multiple victims? People don't just start attacking a
person for fun. There's always a reason. You may not agree with me, but in my
experience diversity initiatives are nowdays extremely aggressive.

~~~
fzeroracer
You're making an excuse for a woman suffering harassment, enough so that she
clearly felt unwelcome at the company while acting like it's her fault for
'going too far' somehow, a claim which is entirely unsubstantiated.

Your logic is absolutely absurd. Acting like people 'don't just start
attacking someone for fun' ignores the fact that people can and do face
racism, sexism, transphobia and so forth. Especially when she clearly
encountered transphobic comments, some of which I even saw spread here on HN.

~~~
CydeWeys
It also ignores the fact that bullying exists, i.e. people indeed literally do
"just start attacking someone for fun", and it doesn't stop with childhood.
Anyone who's ever visited the comments section of any website knows this.

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alexandercrohde
What's the difference between going onto blind (a non-work-sponsored app as I
understand) reading dumb/offensive internet opinions and going on to 4chan and
reading dumb/offensive internet opinions?

Was she required to use this app for her job?

~~~
ryanmonroe
One difference is that Blind requires you to verify your account through your
work email address. So users of Blind's Facebook section are presumably
Facebook employees, while (most) 4chan users are not.

~~~
CydeWeys
And Blind is explicitly for workplace discussion, whereas 4chan is just a
random discussion website.

A useful analogy would be that one bar near your work that lots of your
coworkers go to often, and end up talking about issues at work. That bar isn't
officially affiliated with the company, and you don't have to ever go to said
bar to nevertheless be affected by what transpires there. Except Blind has
more to do with the workplace than said bar because a lot of people post to
Blind _from_ work.

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jtms
At what point is a workforce sufficiently diverse? Is it just a matter of “too
many white males in this room - remove some of them, replace with politically
acceptable demographics”? Feels like even in a diverse workplace there are
always going to be people not happy about “not enough people like me here”. Do
we set quotas and start passing over qualified candidates to hit them? I’m all
for fixing real problems, but the target on this one seems exceptional fast
moving and mired in destructive unintended consequences.

~~~
perfmode
You're missing the point.

There are structural problems that inhibit participation from underrepresented
groups. The objective is to level the playing field so everyone has a fair
chance at success.

disclaimer: i am a black engineer who is tired of wasting time arguing with
people who harbor views such as yours.

~~~
bigfartchili
So you end up with unqualified people in positions just to meet the quota. All
of a sudden sterotypes about these people start and anyone from this group
starts getting labeled as dumb because they are hiring candidates by
appearance rather than qualification. Sounds like a real good idea.

~~~
whichdan
Stop assuming that people from underrepresented groups are inherently
unqualified.

~~~
asdkhadsj
> Stop assuming that people from underrepresented groups are inherently
> unqualified.

They're not. They are commenting how the criteria for hiring changed to
include other attributes not related to skill.

If I hire people based on a mix of skill and how much they like baseball, I am
inherently hiring on a different measuring stick. I _could_ end up hiring
someone with the most skill out of the hiring pool, but that doesn't matter -
I'm not hiring based on skill, I'm hiring on some combination of skill and
baseball.

It does not mean that the person who gets hired isn't the most skilled. But it
_also_ does not mean that the person who gets hired _is_ the most skilled. I
stopped caring about hiring the most skilled the moment I added a largely
arbitrary hiring attribute into the requirements, how much they like baseball.

Generally I have a problem with this, but I think it's less of a problem than
people make it out to be. Yes, we _are not hiring based on skill alone_.. but,
we never were. We were hiring based on skill, attitude, work ethic, how they
work with people, etc. A long laundry list of things we want a candidate to
be, and difficult to figure out to boot. So yea, if we stop hiring whites
because we've got too many, we may miss out on some skill - but when so many
of the hiring requirements are vague, difficult to judge and largely a meta-
game itself, we stopped caring about hiring skill long ago. Hell, even skill
is difficult to judge.

Plus, eventually it'll even out. Suddenly we'll have to stop hiring minorities
because there's too many in X company. Which is ironic heh. In the same way
that males in some colleges are becoming a minority. Irony.

------
crowdpleaser
This headline is extremely non-specific. Wasn't James Damore also harassed
over views on diversity?

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byproxy
Not that anyone ought to continue at a place they feel unwelcome, but if
people that fall under the diverse demographic they're advocating for quit,
aren't they just bolstering the status-quo they wish to disrupt?

That said, according to the article's statistics diversity is continually
increasing at Facebook.

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bluecalm
She is openly racist and sexist so good riddance. Let's hope she never is in
position of power again. It's interesting that those posts are always flagged
on HN. Being openly racist and claiming moral high ground is increasing
cultural problem. More discussion on it could be helpful.

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ebiggs
As somebody who's just incapable of acknowledging group-identity diversity is
a thing worth respecting (though, I find individual diversity beautiful and
fascinating) This was something of a rollercoaster:

Oh wow, a woman headed react? That's cool.

Oh wait, a trans-woman... so that's socio-cultural diversity though not
biological diversity - still born a white male.

Unless transgenderism isn't a choice but part of somebody's biological nature,
then it is biological diversity, right?

erm, is being biologically predisposed to not liking chocolate also biological
diversity? Wow, how much biological diversity goes unnoticed by diversity
advocates? Maybe fb is biologically diverse after all!?

Isn't it cool we're all unique individuals with unique interests, although fb
has mostly people who all share an interest in tech. True diversity would be
to get people not interested in tech at fb.

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staunch
What about calling for the big tech companies to move to a blind hiring
system?

You wouldn't see a candidate's face, name, hear their real voice, know their
educational background, what economic class they're from.

You would conduct interviews over chat and voice (maybe use voice morphing
software), which seems entirely plausible these days.

If anything, it would probably improve the hiring of qualified people.
Interviewers can penalize candidates for all kinds of irrelevant things, not
just sex and gender.

This would largely eliminate the very toxic problem of "diversity hires" that
serve to perpetuate stereotypes. It would truly level the playing field.

------
ariabuckles
Sophie was the best thing to happen to React. She lead React’s adoption at the
first company outside of Facebook, and single-handedly answered almost every
question about React on stackoverflow for the first two years of its
existence. She was the number one github contributor to and bug-fixer for
React before she joined Facebook.

React as we think of it today simply would not exist without Sophie. The
entire front-end ecosystem would be drastically worse.

It’s really sad to hear she won’t be leading the react team anymore, and worse
to hear how some employees of Facebook treated her.

She’s hands down the best engineer I’ve ever worked with, and also a
wonderfully kind and caring person.

Her leaving Facebook is a loss for the entire tech community. I hope her next
endeavours treat her with the respect she deserves.

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peterwwillis
Recently I was at a tech meetup event at a bar with about 30 people, and two
elderly ladies were leaving. They came over to our tables and asked, "What
kind of group is this that there's all these men and only one woman?" "It's a,
uh... a technology meet-up." "Ah, I see!"

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matte_black
It’s unfortunate that the more diverse an organization becomes the more drama
it seems to invite.

