FAANG employees tend to consistently be among the most vocal and outspoken critics of FAANG. Also see the 1,200+ employees who signed a petition unconditionally supporting Gebru while turning a blind eye to her problematic behavior.
There's significant overlap between FAANG employees (and SV tech employees in general) and Woke Twitter.
As a white man, when my work is rejected, I assume it's because my work needs improvement. This is an advantage of being a white man. When things don't go my way, I don't need to wonder if it's a macro-aggression, an act of systemic discrimination, or suppression of a marginalized voice. I don't envy my colleagues who navigate these waters.
Furthermore, even if my manager or employer makes it an explicit priority to promote more women or PoC, I don't question whether my own gender or skin color will ultimately work against me at promotion time. I grew up in a time and environment where I didn't need to question that, so I tend not think about it. Even if I did think about it, it's a culturally inappropriate question to ask, so my only option is to keep my head down and work harder.
As a minority growing up in a developing world with actual problems, I never once even heard of these "waters" until immigrating to the most wealthy & powerful country in the world.
Such is the product of a country which hasn't had any real problems in half a century.
That's another beauty of modern discrimination: it's unfalsifiable.
From everything made public, her behavior constitutes a fireable offense at any company I've ever worked at, regardless of skin color. And there is precedent for non-PoCs being fired for posting unprofessional messages to internal message boards. So why would you consider her actions permissible?
I’ve seen similar emails and never anyone fired from them. People have tried to claim equivalence with Damore and they are so night and day different that I struggle to believe the comparison is in good faith. The main difference is that the most egregious emails are often from technical leaders attacking those much lower in the pecking order.
Regarding the beauty of modern discrimination that you note. Plaintiffs in these cases almost always lose, because it is almost unprovable and the bar is high (being called the n-word for example isn’t sufficient). Being unfalsifiable provides little solace if there is no consequence to the discrimination.
You've seen an employee send out an email to colleagues instructing people of color to stop their efforts to improve the company, claiming the internal review process was an act of racist discrimination and dehumanization, and essentially calling their work a lost cause?
You've seen this followed up by threats to resign from the company if the anonymous reviewers' identities aren't revealed? And all this following prior threats of litigation against the company within the past year?
And you saw this from men or non-persons of color who were not fired? Obviously not, but if you do have examples that are sufficiently comparable in your mind, feel free to describe them and make a case. As it is, you're again falling back on unfalsifiable claims.
And I'm still curious to know why you'd expect a company not to fire someone in this scenario?
As you imply, something this specific I've never seen. I have seen emails go out to large mailing lists calling out the integrity of the company with respect to their dealing with a foreign country and saying that the leadership was condoning if not contributing to genocide. This was a white male making this statement and nothing was done (at least not publicly, and they weren't fired).
I posted something earlier about another company and internal emails to a broad mailing list relating to sexual harassment from people in the company. Again, nothing was done there against the people who wrote the email (at least not publicly). And in this case, similar to Timnit, it made national news. Although in that case it was a white female.
What are the arguments about racism that were suppressed? The paper that didn't pass internal review was about the external costs of training large models (correction: the paper also discussed language models not adhering to anti-racist language standards).
This was a tool designed to notify employees of security alerts, not a chat app. These are not the same. It feels like people are being purposefully dense at this point.
My father turned 80 recently and he still works five days a week. That wouldn’t be ideal for everyone, but he enjoys his job and he’s remained sharp and capable.
That milestone really highlighted for me Silicon Valley’s weird relationship with age. It’s absurd to imagine 80 year old engineers working here. We’ll vote for a 78 year old to run the country, but won’t trust them to write code. Heck, it’s a bit shocking to see someone over 50 in my office. As someone who got into software engineering late in life, that’s worrying, and I suppose it’s time to start preparing for my third act.
I think that in 50 years time we'll see 80 year olds in software engineering. With the terrible economy that millennials have faced their entire adult lives, a lot of us will never retire.
Moreover with the slowing of Moore's law, I think it'll be reasonable to keep up-to-date. Experience with 33Hz punch-card machines is not very transferrable to modern systems, but I'm willing to bet that in 50 years desktop CPUs will be in the same order of magnitude, and we'll be using keyboard + monitor.
Anecodotal evidence: As a 19 year old I learnt programming on a 20 year old VBA program built by an IBM punch-card veteran, and was mentored by a scientist with a similar background who could not fathom what classes are.
I would expect in 50 years virtual reality will be indistinguishable from real world, which can make remote team work actually efficient, unlike current state. This has to enhance SW development in unimaginable ways. I still expect to use (virtual) keyboard and some form of 3d mouse. I can imagine multithreaded debugging made much easier.
But yeah code will still be code, on similar platforms, don't expect anything radical compared to VMs of these days. Probably.
Bioengineering in academia. Moved to software engineering for an extra $100,000/year. In hindsight, my overall my standard of living has gone down despite the extra money due the housing crunch in the Bay Area.
I’m sure the man was doing everything in his power to suppress his natural male urge to leap across the table and attack. Because that’s exactly how men are. You’re incredibly brave.
There's significant overlap between FAANG employees (and SV tech employees in general) and Woke Twitter.