Google Dude's Rant

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I'm surprised no one else has posted this.

Some of it is good, some of it is ranty rants. Never use the word neurotic if you want to win people over to your viewpoint.

Sorry, the only link to this I could find was on the Jezebel site. That in no way shows bias, I just knew that they would run the story.

http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320

Is empathy overrated? Should we give up trying to treat each other well because deep down people suck and are competitive and the strongest get the resources more easily?

The thing I don't agree with is this. He seems to think it's ok for certain men to not need a work-life balance and for them to be focussed on making money. I don't think that is good for the soul or for society as a whole. I am an unabashed softy. I want people to connect with nature and spend less time in the office. Even programmers who love programming. Sunshine and the grass beneath your feet is where our ancestors lived and if you're going to use the "these were our origins and you can't change human nature" argument then I think we should take the environment into account. We were never creatures that were well adapted to slaving away inside concrete boxes from early morning till late at night.

The way things have been around here lately, you would think this screed would get more support here. After all, white male conservatives are the ones who suffer real discrimination, unlike what happens to other groups (like women and people of colour) which is just people labelling themselves as victims for attention. White male conservatives would never call themselves victims just for attention, so the discrimination they describe is obviously real and the discrimination against minorities is imaginary. Also, science tells us that white men are just better at stuff than women and people of colour, so of course they are going to dominate in science and tech and should get all the money and jobs because they are just naturally superior. Or something.

There's something about this that concerns my empathetic side.

There's something going on with these guys. Something is making them feel bad inside and makes them want to frame these arguments to create some logic out of the bad feelings.

I don't want to dismiss it as plain old sexism. I met a real life guy who reads this sort of stuff. He comments on it online. He's one of the nicest people I've met. But he's got disillusioned along the way and bought into this MRA stuff.

I'm concerned that they're buying into a rhetoric that is actually making them feel worse, not better. They're pushing away from others, not building bridges.

They're buying into a dog eat dog philosophy because it makes logical sense, but what they really need is the exact same thing we all need. Love, respect and understanding.

The hippy in me will never advocate that men should just be expected to work gruelling hours and drag women along into it. Every single one of us needs a balanced life.

I need to stop typing. I don't know what I'm saying other than the world is screwed up and we need more understanding chaps, not less of it.

The problem lies in how people react to being treated. For example, some people when they are bullied a lot as children learn to empathize with others who are treated unfairly and they grow up not wanting to bully to others but to stand up to bullies; other children will empathize with the bully and will admire the power they wield over others and will seek to emulate that behaviour in their own lives and search for people they perceive to have less power than themselves to bully. These boys empathized with the bullies, and are seeking power over others they convince themselves are weaker than them (in this case, women.)

Makes sense to me.

The author was fired today for "perpetrating gender sterotypes".

It appears he has a PHD degree from Harvard in biology.

Some con-man scientist propagandized him.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-0 ... ve-culture

it would seem the formula Harvard + PhD = credibility

This "con" is called "evolutionary theory" ...

... the con-man baits you with pictures of fossils, fossil charts, chromosome comparisons, conjecture ...

... then comes the hook, "predictably men have evolved to be superior at some things than women".

I've not commented on it because I've not had the time to actually read the entire thing.

However my impression on what I have read is, this was written by someone who is analytical, and possibly on the spectrum, but ironically suffers from lack of diversity of experiences which may cause him to construct only a low resolution representation of the world, and may lead him to false conclusions.

One thing I did read was his comment that women suffer from more stress and anxiety. However I didn't see anywhere where he considered the environmental factors that might contribute to that. For example, women who both work full time and have families often are still expected to perform most of the domestic duties at home, while men who work full time often don't have such a burden. Women may be burdened with having to work harder to prove themselves, and may be more likely to be penalized at work for personality than their male counterparts, and the burden of managing and mitigating these things can contribute to a woman's stress and anxiety.

My current impression is his manifesto actually serves as a testament for a need for diversity. Of course those individuals should still also be competent in their field. I recall reading a while back that one reason Google struggles with diversity is that those interviewed through the diversity program often don't have the skills that the actual hiring managers are looking for.

...I read of this in the SF Chron to-day. The description given there focused more on the piece claiming anti-conservative bias at Google, which is also what the piece linked to focuses on. The discussion of it here (No, I haven't read it yet.) focuses on pointing to me-caveman! discussions of male-female differences. Perhaps those are both elements of the piece, but the different focus seems odd (The Chron piece did quote someone saying he said objectionable sexual stereotypes, or like that.).
I guess it would be easy enough to trace something " anonymous " like this if you really tried. However, Google firing him seems odd, something they could hardly think they could get away with, any opinion you have of the propriety of the firing aside especially if his piece was written on his own time and avoided any " certain " words, or saying " Slavery was neat-o and the blacks should stop complaining " or " The Holocaust never happened ", say. (Must. NOT. Put. Emoji. Here. MUST. Be. Serious here.! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! ! ! !! !!) Is there something in his record at the big G that would give them cover-up in giving.him the ol' bootsie-wootsie ?

It's not clear whether he wrote it in his free time or at work but he emailed it around to all his coworkers at Google, which makes his sexism and racism a problem in the workplace as it creates a hostile work environment for all the women and people of colour he works with who now know that he thinks they are inferior to him and shouldn't be working in tech. That's why it wasn't hard to find out who wrote it, because he emailed it around to all his colleagues who then identified him as the author to management.

I find this is such a long screed of text that I don't really know what he's saying. I've read various opinions on it on the internet and everyone seems to glean a different perspective.

I am a woman who crashed and burned in the tech industry. I came to it after being a mature student and my entry level counterparts were young men with more energy than me. Yes it takes energy to work all day and then go home and learn more code, learn more UI design techniques, learn more SEO techniques.

I couldn't keep up. I got stressed and after being made redundant a couple of times decided to go into something less precarious and less stressful.

Now others have pointed out that women work in many stressful positions. Paramedics for example. So it's not that I'm a women that makes me more stressed. I'm just a person prone to stress. I couldn't be a paramedic either.

I almost believed him for a few hours. Thought that maybe it was because I'm a woman, but then remembered that I know males who crashed and burned in tech and been made redundant too and moved on to other things. They're not less manly because of it. I don't think the ones who stay are more manly.

I do think women tend to be more social and interested in people rather than things. All aspie women know that because We can't quite enjoy their people rated small talk.

But I'm not sure what that's got to do with programming ability. It's like, here's a fact that's true therefore my false assumptions are also true.

Yes this is true, biologically and psychologically speaking working in an enclosed space bent over a computer is not what we are adapted for. Then again staring at a mobile phone 7hrs a day when we are not looking at computers isn't helpful either.

Following the industrial revolution our forefathers chose to leave the farms and enter factories and corporate jobs where memories of feet touching sand are but a distant memory

I've read most of the 10 pages of the memo.

If people wish for an in depth analysis of it, I will post one, but to summarize my thoughts, it was an honest attempt to open a discussion on issues he felt were detrimental to Google, men and women, but some of the comments he made reflect an astounding lack of insight of the female perspective. I understand he is not female and so I don't expect him to have full understanding of the female experience, however for someone who is so fed up with Google's diversity training, my impression was he actually wasn't paying attention during most of it, and he could have avoided many of the pitfalls he made by actually asking women about their perspectives and experiences rather than making the assumptions he did.

His argument:

Women in tech are underpaid/underrepresented because of biological traits that make them less successful as men.

He also thinks women are more neurotic than men, and have lower stress tolerances, due to their biology, which I disagree with.