
Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube Responds to Google Memo - whatsmyhandle
http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/google-diversity-memo-wojcicki/
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orf
He wasn't arguing that women have smaller brains or are somehow biologically
inferior to men, thus are not in leadership/tech positions. As I read it he
was making the point that current positions select for personality traits more
common in men. And that you can't talk about this without getting fired.

He makes the (valid?) point that perhaps you should fix the core issue of the
innate job selection bias rather than trying to implement your own selection
bias while recruiting.

I thought it was an OK read and made some sense, and couldn't understand the
big fuss. Did anyone else feel this way, or am I misunderstanding it? Please
correct me if so, it's open to interpretation but I think the tagline "due to
biological differences in women" is a bit disingenuous.

I also thought firing him was a bit extreme and kind of proved some of his
points.

~~~
nojvek
Some of the points he made were a bit biased hidden behind the curtains of
“its science”.

I grew up really believing that white people were superior because of their
genetics. I’m sure with some studies you can scientifically prove that too.

There are some women who were unable to sleep thinking what their peers would
think about them after reading the manifesto.

You may think it was totally okay but may be you didn’t grow up with the
biases enforced into you from a young age.

I am not a woman, but I know it’s hard to be taken seriously when someone can
just label your behavior as “it’s biological”.

We need to fight this just as hard as we fought to end slavery around the
world.

No matter your color, gender, sexual orientation, age, you will be treated
equally.

~~~
orf
> No matter your color, gender, sexual orientation, age, you will be treated
> equally.

But that is exactly his point: by applying a bias while recruiting you are not
treating people equally. Quite the opposite.

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cropsieboss
Why is everyone appealing to emotions and producing red herrings?

No one refers to any points other than those which they interpret to be
oppressive and offensive (mostly points having to do with female/male
differences which are real and exist). The hypothesis put out are there to
further the discussion, not to be taken as facts (there are words like "may",
"in part" all over the place yet we interpret "may" as "is", and "in part" as
"mostly").

What about Google's unscientific, hidden, irrational methods of fixing bias?

Unconscious bias training is unscientific yet they practice it. It does not
work, or at worst it is harmful. Facebook does it too.

These methods come from one of the hardest fields of science - psychology. We
know how much the studies aren't reproducible, repeatable, some results even
depend on time (more known the methods the less they work).

Why is no one looking at those points?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU)

Watched the interview above and cannot believe how media and almost every
individual responding put this individual in some kind of aggressive,
oppressive, racist frame.

Given the peer-reviewed sources in the video description of the interview no
one sane enough could believe that the guy was being malevolent.

The real guilt goes to the leaker, the dramatizer and the reactionist.

I'm officially stopping with the tracking of this topic. It frustrates me that
so many brilliant individuals become ideologues and witch hunters incapable of
continuing the discussion. It saddens me that "discussion" has turned into
calling this an "anti-diversity" memo and silencing.

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Oddstrider
Appealing to emotion throughout and not tackling any of the questions that the
memo raised, I am left feeling disappointed.

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aianus
So she taught her daughter to stop asking questions and just take an authority
figure's word at face value?

Wonderful, that's definitely going to encourage her to pursue a career in STEM
/s

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krasicki
If this is her takeaway,she should be fired.

