As a biracial and transgender individual working for a startup: I would prefer (and am appreciative of my company's ability to) not discussing these things at work to begin with.
I can't imagine why on Earth anyone would want to bring such a personal topic into the workplace. As a matter of fact, it kind of disturbs the integrity of a professional environment to have these kinds of discussions during working hours anyway.
For the record, I have never felt discriminated against or left-out, or anything other than being another member of my team in a meaningful way.
I think focusing on these kinds of sensitivities can pull a sense of mistrust and underhandedness to the team. I'm not going to invalidate his feelings on the issue, because we are all allowed to feel how we feel; but I would caution anyone in engaging those feelings at work for the benefit of all parties involved.
It's pretty clear that the author is bringing these issues up precisely because other employees at Google did not heed the advice you give:
"“Over the last 5 years I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of ‘fit’ and so much more,”"
In other words, there were many Googlers who did in fact discuss these issues at work.
Sure, it's nice to say, "I would prefer...", but honestly, we would all prefer things to be different than they are. But they're not.
And this is where I really don't understand your comment. Your comment seems to totally ignore the very issue that is explicitly mentioned sub-headline of the article: Apparently, some people at Google not only felt free to discuss these issues in the work place, they did so in a profoundly unprofessional manner thereby creating a hostile workplace.
So stating that "I would prefer...not discussing these things..." doesn't really address the issue that these things were in fact discussed.
That's sort of like saying, "I would really prefer it if my code always worked the way I wanted it to..."
or.."I'd really prefer not to procrastinate so much on HN..."
Don't we all? Alas, that's not the world we live in. The crux of life is what do we do when things happen that we prefer would not happen?
Controversial issues were discussed at work, the author of the memo highlighted the problem and gave solutions, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't, but I think it's important to move beyond just stating our preferences.
I grew up in a mostly black county, and attended predominantly black schools my entire childhood. Something that the typical person on HN doesn't understand is how implicitly absurd, and accidentally racist, it is to view the comments of an individual black person to be representative of black people in general.
We do this all the time, but would never accept a random white person to claim they represent all white people.
Al Sharpton knows nothing about the lives of black people where I grew up. He's never been there. My friends growing up were deeply resentful of his constant claim to be "the voice of black America." He's a New Yorker, through and through. And yet the media elites act as if he was an elected representative of black America.
This Google employee is no different. How does he get to speak for all black Googlers? Who elected him? How many black employees at Google think he's correct, vs. paranoid and overly sensitive?
Show me an actual survey, and I'll open up on this. But this is anecdotal bullshit, just like the placating white hosts on news channels signaling their virtue by picking up the phone and bringing Sharpton on since they don't know normal, non-celebrity black people.
This is an article written by one person expressing their experiences. They aren't claiming to represent all black employees. You've created a straw man with your non-sequitur Sharpton comments.
It's kind of weird that you brought up "Al Sharpton". I've never heard anyone from the black community in the modern era cite All Sharpton, nor speak about him as "King of Black Folks".
> Sure, it's nice to say, "I would prefer...", but honestly, we would all prefer things to be different than they are. But they're not.
I think it's important to note the role that Google plays in breeding this culture. I've worked in fintech for years and have yet to hear a single coworker talk about politics, race, or gender. It's a good policy and SV is just slowly beginning to find out what the reasons for it are.
I think what they're saying is none of those issues should ever come up at work.
Most companies its understood that talking about that stuff leads to a meeting with HR, I also imagine the conversations about police brutality is why they were so silent, because people are afraid to discuss it without saying something that's likely to offend or know its a highly sensitive topic.
I agree work should be neutral ground, at least if you want to keep non-hostile.
All of that is subjective. Every single person will have a different interpretation and clearly the colleagues were fine with it. Without knowing what was actually said, there's no objective measure of whether anything even crosses the professional line or if it was this person just finding it personally disagreeable (which seems likely given the rest of the note).
There needs to be some pushback on how far people expect others to constantly read their mind and cater to their level of offense and sensitivity. Otherwise workplaces and society itself will start to grind to a halt.
>I can't imagine why on Earth anyone would want to bring such a personal topic into the workplace. As a matter of fact, it kind of disturbs the integrity of a professional environment to have these kinds of discussions during working hours anyway
A lot of times, it isn't their choice. I'm glad that you have never felt discriminated against, but just because that's your experience, doesn't mean everyone else's experiences are the same.
Most of my friends are members of the LGBT community, though I am not. I know for them, they want nothing else than to just be who they are, do their work, and go home at the end of the day. But they have been denied that over and over again because they have been forced to work with assholes.
Yeah, society is becoming more accepting, and that's great. I think that makes the negative experiences even worse.
And I'm sympathetic to your friends' struggles, but I don't think it helps them to establish a norm that you must always talk about social issues of the day at work. Sometimes people will be having a welcoming discussion about the most recent antidiscrimination law, and sometimes they'll be having an incredibly non-welcoming discussion about Jessica Yaniv.
There is no escape from assholes at any company of even medium size. From the narcissistic architect, to the arrogant sales rep, to the ignorant vegan. It's part of any society.
The problem is, people have been coddled so much and isolated from it to the point that they're unable to cope with it when they experience it. More people need to spend more time pushing themselves into uncomfortable positions instead of averting them. Don't let a temper get the best of you and stay rational. It makes you emotionally/mentally stronger.
I think it's the opposite. Sex, politics, and religion used to be verboten in any professional context. There's good reason for that: you're going to have to get along with people who believe different things than you do, and the best way to do that is to focus on your work instead of your beliefs.
Google created a culture where employees are supposed to personally identify with their beliefs and now they're paying the price.
I've been in professional workplaces for about 25 years now. Early in my career, I was even in a few offices where I was the only male. You'd be surprised how raunchy office conversation can get when a mostly female office forgets you're there. I've also worked in nearly all male environments and it was similar. IMHO it's not nearly as bad today, people are just more sensitive from my own experience.
The problem is the inability to stay calm and interact with people of differing views.
edit: I find it interesting, I started working in the early 90's at a time when a lot of office environments were shifting mindsets. When smoking/drinking at work was starting to become widely unacceptable, when social interactions between men and women were starting to be widely discouraged. I think a lot of things are better, and a lot of things are worse. But it was never as "professional" as some people seem to think.
I think one of the major issues, is that if I say "I'm just not into identity politics" the person will be knocking at HR's door in precisely 5 seconds and HR will be scheduling re-education for later in that day.
You cannot just be here to do work these days. You have to be an activist who happens to do work for about an hour per week, but the rest of your day better be spent expressing the approved opinions, genuflecting at the correct people, and consuming the designed propaganda. These companies don't have employees, they have activists who they are too afraid to fire.
> The problem is, people have been coddled so much and isolated from it to the point that they're unable to cope with it when they experience it. More people need to spend more time pushing themselves into uncomfortable positions instead of averting them.
I promise you that when LGBT people encounter bigotry at work, the problem is not that they've never been discriminated against before and need more discrimination to toughen them up.
Yes, dealing with assholes is an important life skill, and it takes time to learn.
I don't see how that relates to my point. They have to be dealt with one way or another, I don't think we should just accept their presence as inescapable. Assholes should be confronted, not tolerated as inevitable.
Yes LGBT people should dispassionately discuss with homophobic and transphobic folks by rationally engaging them in the marketplace of ideas.
"You know, you think my sexuality is an abomination that should not exist and I will go to hell, but have you ever considered that - hear me out - this could not be the case? Do you have any data to back this up? Aren't you falling into an ad hominem fallacy?"
"Ah right, you have correctly pointed out a gaping hole in my otherwise excellent deductive reasoning. I hereby bow to your argument and am not homophobic anymore."
And once again, the power of rational debate shines through and through.
Are you really equating someone choosing to remain at a job where they work with assholes to slavery?
Not everyone has the economic freedom or mobility to simply leave a job. Jobs and orgs change over time, so you can go to work one day and find out the new lead for your team is an asshole.
It happens every day to people who don't have the option to leave their job whether it's in an Amazon warehouse, or the top level engineering roles at a FANG company.
It's not even close to being comparable to slavery, but it is still being forced to work with assholes because the leadership team isn't doing a good job of removing assholes from the work environment.
What? Everyone has the option to leave, otherwise it is involuntary and IS slavery... if you are making the choice to stay, then it is not forced at all. There is always another option besides making the choice to stay. You are actually not forced to stay.
> Are you really equating someone choosing to remain at a job where they work with assholes to slavery?
No. If you are not allowed to leave, then it is slavery. Look at carefully what you have just said: choosing, indeed, that makes it voluntary, you are NOT FORCED to stay, you CHOSE to stay because of your preferences and whatnot.
Also a reminder: we were talking about "working with assholes", do not come up with scenarios where your future hypothetical individual will have ZERO opportunities, skills, etc. :)
It takes a particularly simplistic view of the world to have a response like this.
For many in the tech world, getting a new job is straight forward, but that is not the norm. It is stressful. It might require moving to a new location. it might require taking a pay cut.
There are many reasons someone might want to stay in a crappy job. One might be it's the only job they can find in their current location (especially outside of tech hubs), and they are tied to their current location for reasons of family or other obligations.
I have a friend who is staying in a shitty job because one of the perks of the job is reduced college tuition for her son, and that's more important to her than being happy at work.
You are a privileged person if you have never experienced something like that. I hope you never do. But please don't assume just because you haven't that no one else has either.
> There are many reasons someone might want to stay in a crappy job.
Many reasons for choosing (or preferring) to stay, I never denied that.
> I have a friend who is staying in a shitty job because one of the perks of the job is reduced college tuition for her son, and that's more important to her than being happy at work.
A choice has been made here. The choice to STAY, and NOT LEAVE. It does not magically make it forced when it was a voluntary decision. Your friend preferred to stay in the shitty job because she valued reduced college tuition for her son more than she did not want to do the job. You said this yourself: "that's more important to her than being happy at work.". Exactly! Where is the "force" here? All I see is preferences and values.
Given an unrelated choice, they have unchosen and unwanted consequences of having to deal with an asshole. Play word games all you want, but the average person understands the meaning here.
They do not want to deal with the asshole. That's what is meant here. Not an analysis of all the history and choices that led to them to this moment in their life. This is not difficult to understand.
I don't know what point you're trying to make. That they should care for their son less so that their life is a little easier? Because that is what it's sounding like. Or maybe you're just being a pedantic asshole yourself.
Thank you for calling me an asshole, but this was not necessary.
> That they should care for their son less so that their life is a little easier?
Definitely not. I am not sure how you could conclude that given my posts about choice and preferences. I do not care which choice they make, but they made one over another because they valued that over the other. There is no force here whatsoever, it is all about preferences. If you value your job more (for whatever reasons, e.g. so you can feed your kids) than you dislike assholes, you stay. Some people would rather switch jobs than remain with assholes. Some people would tolerate it. Some people are too lazy to take it to their superiors (or just do not care enough). Of course the list is non-exhaustive, but the point is that neither of them are forced to stay and work with assholes. That is my point, that ultimately you are not really forced to work with assholes. You are free to leave the workplace. You are free to switch. You are free to attempt to resolve the issue. Depending on your workplace, you may be free to join another group. Again, this list is non-exhaustive, too, and to make my point it does not matter. Maybe you could read my other comments on the subject, but in no way am I suggesting what you think I am suggesting. Let me regurgitate, my point is: no one is holding a gun to your head and forces you to work with assholes.
Please re-read this one:
> A choice has been made here. The choice to STAY, and NOT LEAVE. It does not magically make it forced when it was a voluntary decision. Your friend preferred to stay in the shitty job because she valued reduced college tuition for her son more than she did not want to do the job. You said this yourself: "that's more important to her than being happy at work.". Exactly! Where is the "force" here? All I see is preferences and values.
I am not trying to suggest a choice for her, why would I decide for her? I am not trying to decide for her. I am simply making an observation regarding her values, and they are fine! But is she forced to do what she does? No! She made a voluntary decision. There are no mysterious forces.
How about you tell me regarding your example where or what the force is, then we can continue it from there. However, it is going to be difficult, because even you yourself said this: "that's more important to her than being happy at work.". It is exactly what I meant. No one forced her. She made a choice based on her values and preferences. Do you disagree?
My company held an optional meeting / fireside chat to discuss being LGBT in the workplace, as part of the office's Pride celebration. Compared to my old company --which never even acknowledged Pride occurred-- it was kind of nice to have an hour to reflect on that. Otherwise, personal topics like this never come up. I think it's okay if it's a group of people who choose to opt-in for a discussion for 1 hour once a year. Then you're not "forcing" coworkers who don't want to be there to listen, or worry about sewing mistrust, as you have mentioned, which is a valid concern. You don't want people worried about preemptively stepping on your toes to the point where it could impact you professionally.
>I think it's okay if it's a group of people who choose to opt-in for a discussion for 1 hour once a year. Then you're not "forcing" coworkers who don't want to be there to listen, or worry about sewing mistrust, as you have mentioned, which is a valid concern.
Yeah, but what happens when someone never shows up for things like this? Do people start getting suspicious that they're anti-LGBT? That's my worry whenever a workplace starts trying to bring non-work-related stuff into the workplace like this.
I have a hard enough time with companies that want to have "team lunches" or dinners. Even though they're really optional (or "optional"), if you never show up for them, it makes you look like you're "not part of the team". It's inevitable with any workplace social activities: if you're the one guy who never attends, it makes you stand out. What if your company/team likes to go to happy hours regularly, and you don't drink and hate bars? Again, it makes you look like a black sheep.
Honestly, I'd prefer it if employers stopped trying to act like my family and just stuck to getting work done, and letting me go home ASAP so I can do things I prefer and eat food I prefer. (With those team meals, they always pick restaurants I hate.)
One of my previous companies had "kids day" during which employees could bring their kids, there were random activities set up for them (craft, coloring books, etc) and everybody could volunteer to hang out with them.
I never attended, and after maybe half a dozen of sessions during which I kept doing, you know, work, my coworkers started assuming and asking me if I hated kids... And I have 2!
> Yeah, but what happens when someone never shows up for things like this? Do people start getting suspicious that they're anti-LGBT?
There was no expectation for everyone to show up. The meeting space wouldn't even have facilitated it. It would be unreasonable for there to have been an expectation for that reason alone.
Nobody's going to think your anti-LGBT unless you make comments at work disparaging LGBT people. You don't have to be proactively pro-LGBT in the workplace to be not "against it".
when you have a widely disseminated open invitation to particular social-issue oriented things, the lack of involvement or attendance is visible and the door is open for people to wonder about it.
if you combine a situation of "i feel this group is suffering and we need to pursue remedies asap" with "this person appears disinterested [from lack of attendance] in discussing the issues facing said group" you can get to places of suspicion and worse. that is, if you feel a group is suffering and it appears someone just doesn't [seem to] care, it's natural to wonder if they're not exactly on the nominally-friendly side of the issue.
this isn't weird or unusual, just ordinary social dynamics.
That would imply that if 85% of the office didn't attend the meeting, 85% of the office is anti-LGBT. I'd find that incredibly hard to believe. When people are super opposed to things en masse, they don't hide it.
we're not exactly talking about logical syllogisms. there is no specific implications; just an understanding of how people interact.
what if someone's whole team regularly attends these meetings, but that single someone never goes? even if they've never said anything, it doesn't seem unrealistic for at least some of the other teammates to wonder why.
how you get from wondering to suspicions really depends on a person's assumptions, philosophies, politics, etc.
Isn't it exactly what the author of the memo is saying though? People at his work had nothing to say about police brutality against black people, so of course they were racist and supporting it.
> Isn't it exactly what the author of the memo is saying though?
No, it doesn't seem that way to me.
> People at his work had nothing to say about police brutality against black people, so of course they were racist and supporting it.
No, I think he's saying that them having something to say about every news item imaginable except the one that resonated with him in that way (well, other than their dismissal of the protest) was alienating and distancing independent of what motivated it.
Maybe I misunderstood the article and the memo, but it felt very much like it was saying, “I have to deal with racists at work, like that time no one supported a political issue that I care a lot about”. Maybe it was more the article’s editorializing rather than the memo itself that gave this interpretation.
Nobody talks about the Stonewall riots at work, or how gays couldn't marry nationwide until years ago, but I don't assume they're anti-LGBT for failure to discuss these things.
To be fair, I never accused the author of this (in fact, I'm one of those lazy people who frequently doesn't even read the article before jumping in and commenting).
Instead, I was merely raising the question about how people who don't attend such activities are viewed at their workplace and if it might negatively affect their standing at work, because I've seen this with other activities.
The author thinks coworkers are bigoted for this reason:
> Over the last 5 years I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of ‘fit.’
Not for lack of attending some discussion sessions.
Maintaining a professional distance while in the workplace makes sense by itself, but it's inconsistent with the "bring your whole self to work" policy that the author cites.
Google somewhat prides itself on it's 'open culture'[0] and I'd say that this is not only well known, but is a point of pride in it's hiring process and a recruitment tool. The ethos of talking about anything and everything is celebrated and encouraged.
To then have an 'open' culture in every respect except with racial issues (broadly defined here) as indicated by the memo's author, does not square.
Sure, the OP here may agrue that a work first culture is better (and I agree to a certain extent), but that does not fit within Google's culture.
The memo's author is correct to point out the mis-match, and in the open culture of Google should be celebrated for doing so.
If they do get flak for it from higher-ups, then I think it is fair to state that the open culture of Google is de facto dead and Googlers should adjust.
Happily for HNers, this means that the FAANGs are on the way out and their 'moats' may start to develop holes that can be exploited by start-ups. Look out for the greybeards sooner than later as the elves start to leave middle earth, so to speak.
I think most people are freer than they believe to bring themself to work.
Even at companies in rural areas, people can generally be somewhat "weird" or "alternative" and still be accepted at work if they don't make their personality a weapon to annoy people with.
>As a matter of fact, it kind of disturbs the integrity of a professional environment to have these kinds of discussions during working hours anyway.
I don't see it possible to not reference these issues indirectly. For example, how many times do coworkers discuss children. If one is unable to have children, due to either medical issues or identity, their relationship to the topic is inherently impacted and they have a hard time avoiding the topic. They can sometimes punt by mentioning adopting or not wanting kids, but this still forces the individual to think about the topic even if they can hide it from whomever they are interacting with.
Is this a big deal? I would say that differs between people impacted based on their personal situations.
You literally want to spend nearly half of your awake time with people you have no social interaction with? I'm not saying all topics are appropriate for the workplace... but there has to be some wiggle room.
As a straight white male working for a former startup: I agree wholeheartedly. Even when (maybe that should be especially when) you are supposedly encouraged by the company to do so.
Discussing politics, race, sexuality, or religion at work only ever leads to discomfort or hurt feelings on someone's part, even if they are superficially identical to you.
Hell, even someone being vehemently anti-Trump at work makes me super uncomfortable, even when I feel similarly.
I can't help but feel like the continuing rise of situations like this will end up in a return to a professionalized work environment, one in which sociopolitical and personal opinions are kept to oneself and the focus is purely on the work. Most of these conflicts seem to arise because the line between personal and professional has been eroded almost entirely in contemporary American culture.
While in theory an organization that can openly allow its employees to discuss and debate all of their strongly-held opinions, it seems to mostly result in chaos, even somewhere like Google which ostensibly employs some of the smartest people in the world. It would seem far more efficient for a firm to simply ban discussion of controversial and personal topics. Of course, this is entirely contrarian to the zeitgeist, in which local and familial social bonds have largely been replaced by co-workers and the idea of a "professional" as in "not personal" is perceived as an antiquated tradition.
> a return to a professionalized work environment, one in which sociopolitical and personal opinions are kept to oneself and the focus is purely on the work.
This (a) may or may not really have existed in the austere sense you're describing it, and (b) if it did exist, it existed in a world where people had much stronger community life than they do now. In a world where everyone is atomized, where nobody knows their neighbours, nobody attends church (and if they do, their neighbours don't, so it doesn't achieve the goal), and so forth... is it any wonder that people have turned to those who they spend 8 hours a day with for some sort of socialization?
If we "return" to not discussing anything with our peers and just being professional robots, to avoid 'chaos', we'll have lost our last healthy outlet for this sort of thing. Expect more depression, more radicalization, etc. when the only people who provide you with what feels like genuine social expression are those you find online who agree with you already.
> it seems to mostly result in chaos
I attribute this far more towards the current climate of virtue signalling: being outraged or outraged-on-behalf-of-others brings you social rewards, stimulating the part of your brain that evolved to feel good when you are socially accepted. We're abusing our own chemical reward mechanisms in an unhealthy way; where in the past people used to have thicker skin and knew it was unacceptable to get outraged in a professional environment, now people see it as part of the package, and HR backs them up.
You want a return to professionalism, let's fix that, rather than stripping work of its social components.
> If we "return" to not discussing anything with our peers and just being professional robots, to avoid 'chaos', we'll have lost our last healthy outlet for this sort of thing.
Absolutely not. It means your healthy outlet will be with your friends, those mututally selected for compatibility, and in contexts where such discussions are presumably welcome.
As opposed to the workplace, with people brought together by happenstance to cooperate productively, despite personal differences that are irrelevant to the production process.
> I attribute this far more towards the current climate of virtue signalling:
In many a historical era, tiny theological or political disputes have set neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother.
In the aftermath, the solution that civilized societies evolved was: don't discuss politics or religion! It worked. Let's restore it.
I wonder if that was one of those solutions that only worked because of the state of technology at the time.
We didn't need to legislate certain privacy guarantees because they were simply expected and we didn't anticipate machine learning.
Similarly, we could rely on boundaried social contexts since we didn't have the ability to look into each others lives through facebook, nextdoor, etc.
So that solution might more have been a stopgap coping mechanism to delay our need to find another better solution, like societally learning to better respect each others differing backgrounds and values.
> your friends, those mututally selected for compatibility
I have those. I'm very conscious, though, that that's not true for everyone, and it's hard to maintain these things later in life as everyone moves around and becomes too busy with their own lives.
I can see "virtue signaling" if the chief motivation is to actually signal your virtue to an unrelated audience for the purpose of rewards.
But that's different than a scenario where someone is proportionately reacting to something outrageous by sticking up for someone to the actual offender, or sticking up for someone to the group that can resolve the offense. Those situations seem more analogous to outrage in professional situations when people targeting their actions in a way that might actually help bring about a positive change. (As opposed to posting it on Instagram.)
I think our chemical reward mechanisms are more often hacked by rewarding promotion of conflict, rather than rewarding promotion of resolution.
> where nobody knows their neighbours, nobody attends church
In America, plenty of people know their neighbors and have their phone numbers for security purposes, and over a 1/3rd of Americans attend church. So, in the context of discussing an American company, these are very off-the-mark statements.
Yes, I think you are right. I think this is part of growing up pains that Google is going through.
Initially you are a cool small company where you're making buttloads of money, people think of you as very cool/smart/hip, you feel great going to work, wearing company's colors in public, every time someone talks about the company it's to praise it and express their envy towards your job. People are encouraged to bring their whole person to work, that improves productivity and makes the office feel like home. Of course, this works very well because of all those things I said plus the fact that with a small sized company the make up of the team is mostly non-diverse and even when it gets some employees belonging to minority groups, they are very likely to be of a similar socio-economic background.
Then the company grows. Mistakes are being made, some more accidental than others but with a large company affecting everyone's lives and making offensive amounts of money it's inevitable it's going to do things some people hate it for or going to create enemies, people that dedicate significant parts of their lives to criticize everything there is to criticize about the company. Now the environment outside and inside is not as great or relaxing. You start to not wear the company colors anymore and notice that if you bring up the company you work for in conversation the immediate reaction is to complain or to criticize some past action. Also now you have a very large number of employees compared to the starting days, with different views/ideas/socio-economic backgrounds so there's lots of friction and it's extremely easy to say something that someone somewhere will find it offensive. I think in that situation a return to a more traditional "let's not talk about non-work stuff at work" approach seems better to me.
A return to? Social mixing with coworkers has always existed and always will exist... you're talking about people that you are spending more than a third of your awake time with... socialized interactions will happen and you cannot policy your way out of natural events.
I suspect we were never there, it was just that a set of what today we consider "sociopolitical and personal opinions" were not seen as such, e.g. (content warning) groping the secretary, joking about the office retard, etc.
"... a return to a professionalized work environment, one in which sociopolitical and personal opinions are kept to oneself and the focus is purely on the work."
Forgive me but: When was this ever the case in the work environment?
Well, I don’t have firsthand experience but I imagine most “traditional” industries don’t have issues mentioned above very often. It doesn’t seem to me that insurance companies or bread manufacturers have problems with their employees getting entangled in the culture war.
"I imagine most “traditional” industries don’t have issues mentioned above very often."
Finance is a well-known boys' club. Law? How could insurance companies not have the same issues, given that redlining and offering different rates to different races was only made illegal a few decades ago?
Are you sure pastry and bakeries don't have culture war issues? I was under the impression there's been plenty of culinary debate where chefs with the greatest respect were always male chefs.
I’m making a distinction between “political issues are constantly discussed and encouraged in the workplace” and “political issues exist in the field.” The culinary field may have its own sociopolitical issues, but they certainly aren’t discussed often in the workplace, largely because there simply is too much work to do for the job.
"The culinary field may have its own sociopolitical issues, but they certainly aren’t discussed often in the workplace, largely because there simply is too much work to do for the job."
Are you certain about this? I was under the impression that kitchens had a large reputation for foul-mouth, offensive behavior and attitudes, including along political lines.
I have spent a considerable amount of time working in kitchens. Of course there are foul mouths and bad attitudes. But it’s fundamentally a sort of blue collar job, one in which you have to do the work or you’re gone. The harsh language has nothing to do with race or class or anything typically talked about in technology companies. It’s far more meritocratic in a skills-based way than most industries IMO.
> I can't help but feel like the continuing rise of situations like this will end up in a return to a professionalized work environment, one in which sociopolitical and personal opinions are kept to oneself and the focus is purely on the work.
We tried this already. People just kept moving the goal posts. Political correctness and microaggressions. The battle is never over because some people refuse to quit fighting it.
> Provide additional mental health support for Googlers of
color — especially following critical moments impacting their communities
> Throughout my time at Google, my mental health has been heavily influenced by what I read in the
news. And in America, that means frequently reading about innocent black men and women who’ve been killed by police officers. Whether the issue is police brutality, or mass shootings targeting the LGBTQ community, or racist comments from the President debasing immigrants, Google needs to provide mental health support equitably, which means making a more concerted effort to create opportunities for underrepresented groups to seek counseling and support.
With respect, I don't think this is an employer-based issue. Because this was caused by a non-work related source [the news], I think it should be the responsibility of the individual to seek therapy and other resources on their own time and on their own dime.
Now if the employee was experiencing mental health issues as a direct result of coworkers or the work environment, then yes, the company should provide support.
In fact, Google does provide free counseling for the staff who have to filter through illicit images on Google's search engine. Since those employees are regularly exposed to horrendous issues as part of their work, they get company-sponsored help with it.
The company has a very generous mental health policy. 25 free counseling sessions a year. They're supposed to be for short term use. However, I heard a separate complaint that none of the available counselors were African American and thus wouldn't understand the employee's specific issue.
As someone who has been through counseling, and with two immediate family members who are professional psychologists, I can tell you that "understanding someone's specific issue" doesn't matter nearly as much as one might think. People have this idea that the counseling process is analogous to a medical procedure: you go to the doctor, describe the problem, they diagnose you, and prescribe an intervention. That is not generally how it works. There is a little bit of that on occasion, but mostly counseling works simply through the process of rendering your feelings into words in the presence of another human being who is listening to you but in whom you are not emotionally invested and who is not emotionally invested in you. That, in and of itself, turns out to be tremendously helpful. (The same mechanism is in play in other kinds of human activities as well, like book clubs, writers groups, or religious gatherings.) You don't have to be black to learn how to provide this service to someone who is.
I agree. I'm a black man, and my counselor is an older white woman. She completely changed my life, helped me build self esteem, and taught me why doing what the ex-Google employee does is a bad idea (reading tons of negative news, and stressing myself out over issues bigger than I am). There are certain things that she can't relate to, but the root of all emotional healing is becoming a better person overall.
It sounds like this guy spends way too much time on Twitter/Tumblr (Twitter is essentially Tumblr circa 2013 since everyone left their porn blogs behind). America is definitely racist still. I experience suspect shit from white people all the time, but I don't let it bother me because I don't have the power to change anyone. It sounds like this guy doesn't realize that you can't live a healthy life (mentally) and non-ironically be radical about certain social issues IRL.
> Where are you headed, [REDACTED]?” another teammate asked with an innocuous timbre as the restof our pod curiously awaited my response.
He even acknowledges the fact that they weren't purposely being mean or anything, they just don't understand how the ex-Googler is feeling. I'm not taking up for his co-workers, but I bet if he spoke up in a chill way, they would've corrected themselves and explained what they really meant. But instead, the ex-Googler drops his head, leaves the office, and writes a slander essay like a passive aggressive little [redacted].
To wrap this up: Yes, there are some fucked up cops out there who are shooting unarmed black men, but the majority of cops aren't terrible people, and expecting privileged white people to understand us is counter-productive. White people will NEVER understand how it feels to be a black man in this country, and it's not worth trying to explain it. All we can do is be the best we can be, and hope the kindness, smiles, and compassion are reciprocated. If not, fuck em.
I think that's a healthy outlook. It's not your job to educate your coworkers. Though, I think people should feel ok discussing it. The idea that white people would "never" understand is a little bit much, but it's not going to be an easy conversation. This is the type of thing that you are only going to change minds about by methodical teaching. Honestly, I don't recommend it, unless this is a friend of yours that you want to maintain for a long time, and think it's worth investing the effort for the long term health of the friendship.
Your post started out rather sympathetically, but I find I lack sympathy by the end. You rage against how racist you think white people are, a belief you justify with absurd generalisations - white people are "privileged", they will "NEVER" understand (not even if they try and you talk to them about it), and so on.
I have to say something deeply unpopular here - yes, I know in America maybe it's different, but there's only racist people I've ever met have been people engaging in this kind of casual racism against whites. I never saw the opposite. Most accusations of it turn out to be bad statistical assumptions, like "percentage by race of people experiencing a bad outcome differ from the general population, so it must be racism" - ignoring all other factors.
> White people will NEVER understand how it feels to be a black man in this country
Personally, I'd prefer to change things so that "how it feels to be black in this country" is no longer a thing that needs to be understood. Yeah, I know this isn't going to happen in my lifetime, but even a white boy can dream.
> As someone who has been through counseling, and with two immediate family members who are professional psychologists, I can tell you that "understanding someone's specific issue" doesn't matter nearly as much as one might think.
That probably depends on what kind of “counselor” is involved; the same term can be used to refer to a variety of to licensed mental health professionals or to people who are basically peer counselors with minimal specialized education. The latter is relying very heavily on their own lives experience, so it clearly matters.
Even for the professionals, psychological safety of client with the counselor is going to be a significant factor, and someone who is coming from a place of perceived pervasive hostility and neglect from outside of their own racial group that leaves them metaphorically curled up in a ball of fear and silence around people outside their race is going to be hard for someone who triggers that reaction in them to help.
However, this relies on the ability of the person issuing the treatment to provide the appropriate amount of response to the person making the problems into words. If I talked about my (hypothetical) child abuse to a psychologist and the psychologist began engaging in therapeutic techniques to normalize the abuse I would be extremely offended and likely come out worse for wear.
If I, a person of color, am having emotional difficulty processing the anxiety I feel about police persecution after being exposed to information that my race is being disproportionately persecuted, I really need a healthcare professional that (at the very least) has knowledge on when to engage in trying to direct me from my anxieties vs acknowledging that I am experiencing a normal amount of anxiety for the situation. Part of this may in fact be wanting a healthcare professional who is of my race because I have been harmed in the past by professionals who did not share my race practicing inappropriate treatments on me.
Similarly, there are plenty of female patients that ask for a female doctor, even in non-therapy medicine, because plenty of medication, illnesses, etc. show differently for women.
That's a fair point, but I'd argue that gender differences and racial differences are, well, different. There really are salient biological differences between males and females, whereas the differences between blacks and whites, while real, are purely social constructs. If you judge a prospective counselor by the color of their skin you are IMHO part of the problem.
This is not to say that you shouldn't judge a counselor by their behavior after you've started working with them. But I think it's possible for a person with black skin to be just as insensitive to the concerns of black people as someone with white skin, e.g. Clarence Thomas.
> If you judge a prospective counselor by the color of their skin you are IMHO part of the problem.
There's a rather small but critical lack of nuance in your sentiment.
The idea isn't that you judge the person because of their skin color. Nobody is saying being white or black makes you a worse or better counselor or person. The idea is that you merely judge the likelihood that the person will be able to relate to you about something in your own personal life. There's nothing "problematic" about making that kind of judgment. It doesn't need to be justified or rational to anybody else. It's your personal life that you're looking for someone to open up to. Nobody else has any right to anything in your personal life, and you have every right and responsibility to make it better by your own criteria. If there's any problem here, it's the sentiment that other people have a right to dictate whom you should and shouldn't involve in your personal life.
"There really are salient biological differences between males and females, whereas the differences between blacks and whites, while real, are purely social constructs."
But doesn't that mean race can potentially become extremely important when the treatment is via a form of structural socialization?
> If you judge a prospective counselor by the color of their skin you are IMHO part of the problem.
An emotional barrier that is part of the problem for which a person is seeking treatment:
(1) is not a judgement, and
(2) indisputably is part of the problem.
But, in any case, whether either or both of those are true or not doesn't change the fact that it is a real issue impacting the likely treatment outcomes that is sensitive to whether the counselor is in the group triggering the negative response or not.
In my experience, if the patient does not have a certain level of rapport with the counselor, the effectiveness is greatly reduced because neither party can be confident that they're effectively communicating. Communicating across cultural barriers is more difficult and lower bandwidth.
Well, sure, but that's on them. The belief that a counselor will not be able to help you, for whatever reason, will generally be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I see no salient difference between a black person deciding that a white person can't help them because they are white, and a white person deciding that a black person can't help them because they are black. To me, both of those positions are equally odious. One thing I've learned first-hand over the years is that you can't help someone who won't help themselves.
You do need to trust and have a rapport with the counselor, though. While it's true that counseling is more about fixing yourself than having someone fix you, the process doesn't work if you aren't willing to open up in the first place.
Business idea: Machine learning drives a realistic video and audio avatar of a human therapist to ask occasional "How does that make you feel" type questions.
As part of the session the therapist asks you to rate a few different categories of your mental life (e.g. "How content are you with your life/relationships/family/future on a scale of 1 to 5?) The ratings then can be used for data to develop better questions and techniques and marketing claims (people with 1 or more Virtual Therapy seasons a week experience an X% improvement in indicators of mental health).
Subscription model: 10 bucks a month gets two one hour virtual therapy sessions a week.
From my personal experience, I can agree with "personal experience" not mattering as much. But on the other hand, I received counseling as a teenager and my first counselor wasn’t a good fit for me at all (while my dad loved him) and I switched to another. I can imagine a black person having a harder time connecting to a non-black psychiatrist.
I disagree. I personally get cheesed off with psychologists and counselors who I don't feel a connect with. Imho best one's are those that know what is involved in creating an empathetic connection. Sport psychologists are much more interesting to me in that sense cause they can't pretend not to be invested in the person or the team winning.
Maybe Black is a better choice in this case? Sorry, I'm a bit ignorant as to the precise nuances of identity that this person felt were important here.
Sorry I didn’t mean to phrase it as directed at you. It was supposed to be a general statement with context. I suppose I could also do to watch my own language :)
I think this request for more mental health support comes from Google's "we're everything to you" policy. Googlers here and elsewhere have compared Google to a college campus in many ways - "you go be smart and do your thing, and the Company will provide for you". Given than mentality/social compact, it's understandable that this employee would think asking for more mental health services would be ok.
I mean, I think that colleges are not responsible for the mental health of their students, at least to the degree it has been demanded the last few years - the whole 'safe space' concept has gotten out of control. The whole point of college is to learn and be exposed to new ideas, some of which will be uncomfortable and you're supposed to learn to deal with that. Colleges aren't completely indemnified from how students are exposed but the recent demands have been "don't expose me to things I'll disagree with".
>have compared Google to a college campus in many ways - "you go be smart and do your thing, and the Company will provide for you"
I guess this explains why many Google products seem to be pretty brilliant in many ways, but then have utterly glaring missing basic features or problems which never get fixed no matter how much users complain about them.
> Now if the employee was experiencing mental health issues as a direct result of coworkers or the work environment, then yes, the company should provide support.
I think you kinda nailed there - he was placed in awkward situations where the other employees suddenly didn't have an opinion one way or another, whereas they had lots of opinions about ebola, etc... I'm wondering if therapy is even the correct word. It's more of a societal shield we all put up in various circumstances.
Sometimes I try to imagine a world where women or men, other races, would swap places with someone from an actual conversation I had to help me reveal my own biases by trying to examine how things would go differently. We should be at a place where the conversation doesn't really change.
For example let's say you're talking to your uncle about crime in the midwest. Suddenly swap them out for a black person from Minnesota. Is that conversation different now? Why? How do you internalize that so that when you speak you can speak to anyone.
Another example - tradeshows. Sometimes I hear people talking about the customer like they are a wallet - now pretend that those people are suddenly talking TO the customer.
Not only do we have the ability to see how messed up our own actions and language is, but you can now see it in other people.
I'm not saying doing that kind of thing is going to fix all problems, but it is a very good thought exercise.
Well… yeah, but only because I’m going to be careful what I say to avoid stepping on somebody else’s feelings. To dance around the point just a bit - there are people who I can safely be completely honest with, and people who I cannot safely be completely honest with. I’m not sure I’m the one who needs to be doing the adjusting to change that.
Changing your conversations, or more importantly your opinions that you're willing to express based on the person in front of you - well that's just a normal trait that allows you to participate in society at large.
A tame example: I don't talk about the latest in non-volitile memory advances with my friends that I play videogames with.
Practicing debating skills on subjects you don't agree with can be enlightening. Often you will broaden your perspectives, and sometimes you find better ways to argue with how you actually feel outside of a debate context.
I try to internalize a lot of this when I find myself ignorant on a given position one way or another. It helps one to get out of ones' own box. It's also a skill that I feel too few people genuinely exercise and resort to talking louder and trying to shut people down instead of debating a position rationally. Once you lose your temper, you really lost the argument as far as most observers are concerned and look a bit like a nut.
I think too many people spend too little time in uncomfortable or awkward situations to a point where they're literally unable to deal with them. We've had a level of societal protection for our youth to a point where we're no longer raising functional adults but really big toddlers emotionally speaking.
Rational people should be able to have rational conversations with any rational person regardless of differences of specific opinion. We're at a point where that's approaching an exception and not the rule that most people are rational.
The author describes a specific scenario where a co-worker brought up these issues as work. So, yes, it sounds like for this person it was work-related.
However, I disagree with the author's recommendation to provide additional mental health support for people of color.
I think employee affinity groups for employees of different cultures can be a good idea, but specifically targeting POC for "mental health" services? That's not a good precedent.
Frankly, this memo is not well-written, my initial inclination was to dismiss aspects of it because I had a hard time following the reasoning, but once I read it a couple of times, I came around to agreeing about the diagnosis of the problem, but not all of the recommendations offered.
In a professional environment, there need not be any kind of social element at all. Employees are there to get the job done, not hang-out and shoot the proverbial. There is nothing stopping people from going and grabbing lunch or a beer after work and discussing whatever they feel.
Totally agree. Get off social media, shake the hands of your neighbor, and read a book instead of news. Your life will be better and you'll realize that it is not the end of life when someone disagrees with you.
It doesn't matter what is the source of an employee's health issue, the health insurance offered by the employer should cover everything. Though I can understand how some might see it differently after being prodded into place through corporate exploitation and the US healthcare system.
Typically, we hold only one full-time job, through which we acquire all the means of our subsistence. As other commenters have pointed out, this includes--crucially--our health insurance, from which we derive all of our health-needs.
As such, it's the employers' exclusive responsibility to accommodate our health needs. We do not have adequate access, otherwise.
Was reading the US news perhaps part of his job? Google runs one of the largest news machines. Hopefully someone in there is actually reading the stuff the machines collect and disseminate to users.
I once had a boss that always talked guns. Every day he would go on about some politician's secret gun control agenda. The daily news wasn't part of the job until he made it so.
> Now if the employee was experiencing mental health issues as a direct result of coworkers or the work environment
Literally the opening quote:
”Over the last 5 years I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of ‘fit.’”
That's not what he's asking for, though. Here's his recommendation for change:
> my mental health has been heavily influenced by what I read in the news. ...Google needs to provide mental health support... mak[e] a[n] ... effort to create opportunities ... to seek counseling and support.
If he stated instead that his mental health was influenced by his coworkers hateful remarks, or rejecting candidates due to "fit", then yes, I would absolutely agree this is a great direction for Google to head towards.
The former employee used one particular story to describe things at the company that generally made them uncomfortable over the course of their 5 year tenure there, including their coworkers’ reaction to news events that affected them, and hiring practices that they perceived as biased (“reject candidates of color because of “fit””).
The former employee then makes several suggestions, including rethinking hiring practices, providing more robust diversity training, and additional counseling/support for underrepresented employees.
You can debate the validity/truthfulness you perceive in the employee’s account, you can debate whether you think the suggestions are good or not, but saying this isn’t an employer based issue seems like just putting your head in the sand.
One point: the memo mentions some person saying "these protests aren't going to solve anything" and goes on to say how they're just blocking people from getting home. I think it's inaccurate to attribute this to racism or lack of diversity. It's something far simpler.
This person and many like them are just completely self-centered.
You'll probably fine the disruption just affected their commute home. Nothing more, nothing less.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending it. In my time at Google I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto for them, their partner and their dog and how they were underpaid and this was unfair and a problem (and I'm not exaggerating as much as you might think) while not thinking twice about the 2.5 hour commute of the workers who prepare the free food and drive the buses to and from SF.
It's actually infuriating how much people can buy into these things as being "problems" while being completely oblivious to what's actually a problem right under their noses.
I would like to add my (unwanted) two-cents: I'm of the (soft) opinion that protests often cause more harm than good - or, will have a neutral effect - to a cause, particularly when there is anything 'uncouth' to a protest such as violence or obstruction of traffic.
As much as I hate to say it, I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished.
Can someone provide studies or articles demonstrating the effectiveness of large protests in changing the populace's views?
> Can someone provide studies or articles demonstrating the effectiveness of large protests in changing the populace's views?
Protests aren't about changing people's views as much as about normalizing active engagement by the silent whose views on the issue (even if they haven't deeply considered them prior to the protest drawing attention) already favor the protesters.
When people already opposed to position a protest takes dismiss it as unconvincing, they are missing the point. Protests are about mobilizing allies not converting enemies.
> I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished.
OWS directly produced the rapid development of anti-elite populist movements of both the Right and Left which subsequently displaced the dominant faction of the Republican Party and drastically weakened the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, it's a major reason that we have the President we have and that the pool of potential opponents for him in the next election looks like it does.
The meatspace Women's March and the online #MeToo protest movement were the central mobilizing elements in what has been one of the biggest ad most rapid social and political mobilizations of women and around women's issues—in government, workplaces, and society generally—in this country’s history, which had adverse repercussions for a number of very powerful people. It's a key element in the biggest increase in women on Congress from one Congress to the next ever.
There's a famous paper called [DO POLITICAL PROTESTS MATTER?
EVIDENCE FROM THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT](https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2013/retrieve.php?pdfid=22...) that addresses these concerns. They use the weather as a proxy for randomized controlled trials and show that: areas where it rained during the tea party protesters had fewer protesters and the tea party movement had fewer votes in those areas. Because weather is essentially random, we can therefore conclude that the fewer votes was probably due to people choosing not to protest due to the rain, and if they had chosen to protest then there would have been more tea party votes.
What you're talking about is counterfactual inference, which is a non-trivial problem even in well-controlled settings. The effect of large-scale protests would probably be very difficult to quantify with the rigour you're alluding to. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
Occupy Wall Street directly brought the idea of there being a "1%" into everyday political and social usage, which has significantly altered the way we discuss class in this country.
The Tea party, Gandhi and his friends, Protests during Vietnam war, the storming of the Bastille.
Now, in "recent" History I tend to agree with you. My personal opinion is that protests are not violent enough to cause real change.
Edit: I would appreciate feedback from downvoters. I think the few examples I provided are valid to illustrate "protests that caused real change", but if I'm wrong I'm happy to learn.
wasn't the us involved with the vietnam conflict for the better part of 20 years? i was actually under the impression that the vietnam protests, while at times quite noticeable, weren't all that impactful in-and-of themselves.
i think that, insofar as one might be inclined to point at "successful" protests, it's often really an issue of achieving a consensus amongst a plurality of those in power.
perhaps protests can work toward that (i'm not sure); but if so, they could also work against it. i sadly doubt the protests in hong kong, despite their scope and intensity, will change much at all when the powers-that-be neither care, nor (seemingly) can ever be made to care.
Isn't it generally accepted that the US "lost" the war because of the violent anti-war protests? I didn't say one single protest changed the whole thing, but these protests changed the attitude of the population towards the war, made it vastly unpopular, and in the end the US had to give up.
Or maybe they don't agree that it's a problem worth protesting in the first place.
It's interesting that you immediately draw the conclusion that there is something "wrong" with the person or that they are "broken". Having a different opinion than you never seemed to enter the realm of possibility - unless, of course, you conclude having different opinions is being "broken".
I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house
That engineer can probably afford a 5 bedroom house on their salary if they moved to a different city like Pittsburgh or Austin. So it isn't some abstract issue, it's just a concrete question of whether they would like to stay where they are, or move to a city where they could afford a 5 bedroom house.
But protest that is crafted to cause disruption to the populace at large (blocking traffic) needs to be used very carefully.
It can create backlash against and undermine your cause.
Further, the precedent that any group with a grievance can undermine common goods like transportation infrastructure is a dangerous one-- irrespective of the validity and the severity of the grievances..
You don't view the Selma to Montgomery marches, the Orange Revolution, the Vietnam protests, the UK miners' strike, the spontaneous assembly of Germans demanding the Berlin Wall be opened, etc, as having significantly spurred social change?
Just because not every protest is virtuous or successful doesn't mean that protest doesn't have value.
It's not clear that protests were actually the driving force in causing those changes, particularly in the case of the Vietnam protests. The Berlin wall was doomed to fail from the beginning. It was only a matter of time combined with the lucky mistake of a government official.
At the end of the day a modern protest accomplishes nothing. Let's not pretend that government officials don't know what the populace wants. They chose to ignore it for their own benefit and a protest won't change that. The only thing a protest does is give confidence to other powerful people who want to overthrow the current leaders, again for their own benefit. All the big "revolutions" have simply exchanged one abuser for another. The french revolution exchanged the monarchy for Napoleon's dictatorship. Russia went from a monarchy to a communist dictatorship and then to an authoritarian capitalist state. And in the case of east Germany it was the western capitalists who swooped in and bought out the entire country for western-dictated dumping prices, leaving the eastern populace disenfranchised and economically barely better off than before (and sometimes worse, now giving rise to a new nationalist party).
If you actually want to change anything you need to hit the powers that be where it hurts. They couldn't give a shit how many people are unhappy and protesting but what they do care about is money. The strike is the most effective and only effective tool the populace has, short of extreme violence which will just lead to another despot taking power.
It is systemic, and the promotion of identity activism at the expense of economic activism has done a lot to cause it.
Realistically, "corporate diversity" usually means "we have diverse kinds of privileged middle class people in our offices."
E.g. a female CEO is considered a necessary diversity win, but generally no one cares if the food servers and cleaners - most of whom usually happen to be female too - are treated with respect and decency.
Does Google - or any other FANG - actively and practically support anti-poverty activism and awareness to anything like the same extent they support a relatively safe form of activism like LGBT pride?
Yes, you don't see people with this attitude towards the HK protest. There is a completely different standard when it comes to issues of race in the US.
> I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto for them, their partner and their dog and how they were underpaid and this was unfair and a problem
Is it not a problem that someone with one of the best jobs in the world can't afford a decent house near work? It might be related to why the contingent workers have 2.5 hour commutes.
Since when do 2 people and a dog need a 5 bedroom house? And does that really only qualify as “decent”? Especially 3 years out of school...
In any case OP was just trying to point out the entitlement that gets instilled, and how it can be particularly blinding when you’re wrapped up in your own decadent lifestyle. It’s a very common trait among people in the valley, in my experience.
5 bedroom house is an exaggeration. People just want a reasonable (say, 3 bedroom for older folks, 2 bedroom for folks 3 years out of college) house near work, which they can’t afford.
That doesn’t make the fact that ordinary workers have to travel multiple hours each way to afford housing any better. It is just a canary in the coal mine that even very highly paid workers struggle to afford housing in the area.
No one needs a 5-bedroom house. In most of the rest of the world, that's something that only very wealthy people can afford.
And if you don't like the housing options in the Bay Area, don't move there. It's very simple. The only reason housing is so bad in the Bay Area is because people keep moving there and complaining about it, but still putting up with it.
The Vice article says that “he regularly encountered racism during his experience as a Black worker at the company”, but the memo seems to just contain proposed diversity action items and a story about how his coworkers didn’t care enough about Eric Garner. Is there something I missed?
Being annoyed by a protest on your commute isn’t racism.
It’s certainly true that he could have heard other things which were racist and decided not to share any of them, but I don’t really know how to evaluate that. It’s not fair to demand ironclad proof from anyone sharing their personal experiences, but it’s also not fair to condemn Google based on a nonspecific claim with no details that racism happens there.
And there couldn't be anything more exaggerating than your comment here. If tomorrow a climate change protest (which I consider to be of greater importance, by the way) shuts down the whole city, knocking out roads and public transport and prevent me from going to work for a straight week I would be very annoyed. And it's not because my work for this week is greater than the climate change of Earth, it's because these two things are separate and not connected whatsoever. Say anything you want about a subject but never force that into other peoples life.
It's not racism to be annoyed by a protest it's the point of protests. The reason you obstruct traffic is to piss people off. You want to irritate them enough to take action to make it stop. It doesn't matter what they're mad at so long as they're mad enough to make the social change you're seeking.
If you didn't want to disturb anyone you'd protest in an open field out of sight -- but what good is that?
I think reasonable people can disagree about whether this is racist. I would be very cautious bandying around huge accusations about racism like this. Certainly it seems very different from actively going and taking actions against people in a class you believe are inferior.
Many of us who are reasonable and rational come to different conclusions- for example, while I fully support peaceful protests, I think any protest which blocks traffic is unwise and likely to generate negative responses in people who would otherwise be sympathetic.
One of the "funnier" pieces of spin and "revisionist history" that eaks of ignorance that came out during the BLM protests was assertions that the 60s civil rights movement "would have never shut down a freeway". The irony of this being said around the anniversary of the march from Selma to Birmingham is particularly loud.
> I think reasonable people can disagree about whether this is racist.
I disagree. Reasonable people recognize that being miffed that a protest is disrupting your commute isn't racist. It's only the unreasonable people who think it could be.
There's no point in debating what "reasonable" means here, since everyone usually thinks they are reasonable.
I think you've reframed the situation so that it no longer sounds racist. Obviously worrying about your commute isn't racist!
This is, of course, missing the point. I think the reason this bothered the memo's author is because their coworkers had a strong negative reaction to a hypothetical (and likely minor) change in their commute, but no reaction to a high-profile pattern of racially motivated murder by corrupt police officers.
Is ignoring racism racist? I think so. Is prioritizing something super trivial over racism racist? Seems close enough to me.
> Is ignoring racism racist? I think so. Is prioritizing something super trivial over racism racist? Seems close enough to me.
Assuming that silence represents malice is a classic example of totalitarian group think.
And fwiw, you don't know that the co-workers cared more about the commute - they could also be deeply concerned about racism and just not want to discuss it with OP.
I wasn’t talking about silence, I was talking about the person who was communicating their disapproval of the situation because of an extremely minor personal inconvenience.
And of course we don’t know what the person cared about, we just know what they said they cared about, which is all we can go on. They were happy to discuss their political views by saying they thought the protesters were an inconvenience, so it seems pretty unlikely that they did have deep concerns about racism because that response makes no sense for someone who feels that way.
I wouldn't have to try very hard to come up with what I consider to be reasonable opinions that this was a racist action (the opposite of my personal opinion). However reasonable, any of my arguments would be convoluted and probably have to use some sort of philosophical reasoning (such as moral imperative) and would have to resort to systemics, game theory, and probably even postmodern relativism.
Nobody can live those opinions in practice. If the imperative is so strong on this topic, then the imperative would be so strong on so many topics that you'd never be able to go to work.
> As I went to pack my bag, I noticed that my co-workers had stopped working long enough to stare at the television screen, which showed thousands of protestors filling the New York City streets just blocks from where we sat. Suddenly, one of my teammates spoke up: "Ugh. This is getting a bit ridiculous," she said. "I'm sorry. Does anyone else think this is ridiculous?"
> My hands stopped zipping up my backpack, and I turned my head far enough to see her in my periphery -- sitting behind me with her head shaking and arms folded in exasperation.
> "These protestors aren't going to solve anything," she said. "Like, what are those people even trying to do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people off because they can't get to Grand Central? It's annoying. I just can't stand it."
I think this could be a problem of sensitivity or awareness, rather than heart being in the wrong place.
The person speaking might have felt they were aligned with the goals and intended message of the demonstrators, and was only expressing frustration with what they thought were ineffective or unwarranted methods, but...
I suspect that the speaker wasn't in that moment being sensitive to the anguish and sense of urgency some people might've felt, over brutality and related injustice. The demonstrators might've been crying "pay attention to this", and then a coworker seemed to dismiss that.
It's too bad that the writer of the piece couldn't speak up in the moment. Though they alluded to some of why, and I think I understand.
(I probably wouldn't have spoken up then, either, even with lesser stakes for myself. I learned this from a workplace incident, when I was walking up to a group of (presumably straight) coworkers chatting casually about some gay issue in the news (this was before the first US gay marriage), and one of them, who was normally thoughtful, started riffing glibly on how "it's unnatural". I doubt this struck me as deeply as the writer had been, and I hadn't really felt part of an oppressed group, nor had to fear anything around that -- but I was still shocked in the moment, and speechless, as I felt like my face flushed, and I walked away quickly. In hindsight, they were probably within earshot of another coworker, who I knew to be secretly lesbian or bi, but I don't recall whether that registered in my mind at the time. Elsewhere in life, I try to do what I can, but I couldn't speak up in the moment.)
I'm sorry, I don't understand. What's the problem with what OP's co-worker said. She didn't think the protests were effective or useful. Surely she's entitled to feel that way?
Edit: the gist of your post seems to be that expressing political opinions at work is only acceptable if you agree with them. That's obviously nonsense. Either everybody can do politics at work, and you have to accept that some people will disagree with you, or nobody can do politics at work.
I imagine from his position it's very disheartening to see his coworkers have a strong opinion about the protests, and the horrible injustice that is an unexpected traffic jam. But have nothing to say about the wrongful death of a human being. A human being who was murdered and the murderers saw now consequences.
Right, and I'm sure there are plenty of anti-abortion activists that genuinely see terminating a pregnancy as murder and are disheartened by the lack of response for what they are was widespread, systemic violence. I have as much sympathy for those people as I do for the author: not much, because regardless of how strong one's convictions are in a given political opinion the fact that one's coworker do not share that opinion does not amount to disparagement, racism, harassment, etc.
> She rattled off a couple of other disparaging comments about the peaceful protestors I was preparing to
join, repeatedly referring to them as those people b
efore a chorus of my team’s nodding heads, each
bobbing affirmingly behind their desks.
The author did say that the co-worker who said that she considered the protestors annoying and counterproductive was making disparaging remarks.
> Over the last 5 years, I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants,
boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different
languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of “fit,” and so much more.
The author is definitely claiming to have witnessed racist attitudes from co-workers.
> The way it came across to me was a individual sharing their anecdotal experience being a minority in a large and very well known company. It was a reflection on how he felt about their experiences.
Correct. And in doing so, the author demonstrates that he categorized his co-workers as making disparaging comments because she regarded BLM's tactics to be annoying and counterproductive. If this is what the author considers disparagement, it speaks more about his own extremely narrow view of what are and are not acceptable viewpoints than it does about Google.
> Personally though, in response to your comment. I believe the abortion issue is a bit more nuanced than the police killing an man and facing no repercussions.
If you think there's little nuance then maybe you should dig a bit deeper. The police officer killed a man in the commission of a robbery. The autopsy result showed bullets entering Brown's upper chest and exiting his lower back. This is consistent with running towards the officer, which supports the officer's testimony that Brown charged at him.
And there weren't "no repercussions". The officer was investigated, and grand jury was summoned to decide whether or not to indite him. No conviction came out of it, but that doesn't mean that there were "no repercussions".
> But I'm not here to change your mind sir, it's cool to have no empathy for your fellow humans.
I earnestly hope you realize the irony of telling another commenter that they "have no empathy for your fellow humans" because he has a different takeaway from this post.
Over 50 protests around the world. Thousands of people standing up against a horrible grim reality of unnecessary police brutality that ravishes their communities.
Privilege is seeing these events unravel on the television screen in front of you, and having your thoughts settle on "God, what an unnecessary traffic jam." Privilege is reading a story of a black man's struggling with the disconnect between what he and his coworkers find relevant issues, and picking it apart line by line searching for cracks for you large enough for you sit back and decide:
"I have as much sympathy for those people as I do for the author: not much"
The only real irony that comes across to me is that your comments are basically just an extension what the author experienced with his coworkers.
You're right, this is an extension of what the author experienced. What the author experienced were co-workers that did not share his perspective, and he called this difference of opinion disparaging and racist.
I can easily find over 100 protests against abortion in a given year. Does it follow that I am obliged to agree with these protesters, otherwise I am disparaging them? If a bunch of anti-abortion protesters block freeways and someone points out that this mostly annoys the populace and is counterproductive to the protesters goals, then that is disparagement? No.
If nothing else, this author definitely seems to think that he is entitled to the approval of his co-workers when it comes to his political views. And when he does not get the approval from his peers that he feels entitled to, he calls his co-workers racist. If the author wants people to have empathy for the protesters, then he or she should lead by example and exercise empathy for those co-workers that do not share his perspective on the protests. Otherwise, the author ends up looking like a hypocrite.
> I think this could be a problem of sensitivity or awareness, rather than heart being in the wrong place.
Some people are upset over deaths and other major injustices, and, without acknowledging that, picking that moment to start complaining about how their demonstration affects getting to the train station.
I think that having awareness of why and just how people were upset, and some sensitivity to that, would cause one to have more sensitivity in how you say what one does. There will always be mistakes, but we should try.
Can someone explain why Google seems to be such a hotbed for stuff like this? I ask this question in earnest. Perhaps this is just bias in what the media chooses to report, or perhaps the cross-section of news that I read fails to find other examples, but social uproar seems overwhelmingly more common at Google than most other workplaces in both the software industry and most other industries in general.
As for the memo itself, I do highly recommend reading it directly first rather than commentary on it:
Google has long had a policy of 'bringing your whole self to work.' The company actively encourages (or at least, encouraged) its employees to be political, and to be 'true to themselves' in the workplace.
- The call that claims "diversity" should include movements towards less diversity?
Of course it should. It's the diversity of opinions. Otherwise you're calling for an exterior diversity (I'm black, you're Asian, she's transgender) but a complete uniformity of opinions and worldviews.
Then I imagine they are quite happy since their desire for less diversity would be met by (the imagined policy) excluding those who want less diversity.
Unless of course the objection is not to diversity per-se but some particular groups.
If the anti-diversity crowd are under represented in tech, it's probably for they same reason the highest productivity areas are the most liberal in their countries and formed mostly from those that left other areas.
Sure, but not in a work place. That is not the appropriate place to denounce other workers as "inanely inferior".
Even so, there are plenty of workplaces that practice anti-diversity, pro-discriminatory behavior. I believe even US govt contractors are allowed to discriminate on sexual orientation now. So there are plenty of workplaces for those uncomfortable in tolerant environments and preferring a more bigoted work place. But apparently that is insufficient: apparently they want _no_ work place to be diverse.
And indeed, whatever strife there is will end the instant those who resent equality overcome their internal angst.
It’s just what’s hot right now? Look at hacker news. There are several articles on interesting technical topics on the front page right now and this thread has almost triple the comments of any other. People love to have opinions on this stuff.
Could also be related to the fact that Google is hiring a ton of people fresh out of college, given how politically active and sheltered from any kind of dissent views current college kids are.
Definitely some bias in reporting. If this happens at a small company no one cares, it's just another day.
Also I feel like Google had attracted some idealistic people who are surprised when real life doesn't conform to their expectations, then their reaction is disproportionate and overly centered on the work environment.
Aside from any intrinsic reasons to Google, it's also a huge and diverse company with a big public spotlight on it at all times. Every public flap involving Google gets amplified more than it would for any second-tier place.
Googlers are very politically active on Twitter, and Google allows employees free expression, and Google is hugein people's lives, so the Internet iis able and interested in Google gossip.
"Big Company has some wealthy, elitist, casually racist employees" isn't news, except when the company is Google, for some reason. But Google doesn't fire people for airing dirty laundry.
> Googlers are very politically active on Twitter, and Google allows employees free expression
But if you post something which doesn’t pander to the extreme left on a internal discussion group, you get your memo “leaked” out in public and are fired in less than a week (Ref James Damore).
Google only encourages leftist politics, and nothing else.
Damore was fired for the words that others stuffed into his mouth, not the words that he actually wrote. Most critics of the memo state that it:
* Claimed that female engineers are less capable than male engineers because of biology.
* Claimed that women and URM engineers at Google were hired despite not being qualified for the work.
* That the memo is "anti-diversity".
None of these were correct. The memo's arguments on biology were about male vs. female preferences. That is, men and women's rates of making career choices, not the effectiveness of men and women in the same career. Similarly, the memo did write that google's affirmative hiring processes "lower the bar by reducing the false negative rate" which is an accurate description of the company's diversity hiring initiatives (but most news outlets stripped out the words, "by reducing the false negative rate" leading readers to a false conclusion). And lastly, Damore laid of 5 bullet points outlining discriminatory policies that he argued should be abolished but also laid out 9 bullet points for non-discriminatory ways to promote diversity.
I have seen very few publications that agree with his firing that actually base their arguments on what was written in the memo. The fact that the memo circulated within Google for a month, but Damore was fired one business day after it was leaked to the media strongly suggests that it was the media coverage that resulted in Damore's firing and not the content of the memo itself.
I'm actually sympathetic to both Google and Damore in this situation. Damore's firing sucked for him, but the slanted (and at times, outright false) coverage put Google in a situation where not firing him would be a PR nightmare.
Damore did not get fired for the debunked evopsych nonsense. He got fired by stating the following assumptions:
1) Google does "diversity programs" to increase their number of female employees
2) These programs involve "lowering the bar" to help female applicants get into the company
True, he does not explicitly state that:
3) Therefore, current female applicants are likely to be less competent at their job than current male ones
But I fail to see how this isn't an obvious implication from 1) and 2). This is akin to people "merely asking" about the origin of the IQ gap between blacks and whites and acting shocked when accused of racism.
Note that he also played the same game with the following reasoning:
1) Women have higher degrees of neuroticism, leading to anxiety in high-stress situations
2) High-level positions are often ripe with stress
Again, he does not explicitly state that:
3) Therefore, female employees are less likely to be fit for high-level positions
But the implication is still clear as day. Defending yourself behind "but that's not what I said" doesn't work: people are not stupid and can connect the dots, even if they aren't willing to take your reasoning apart in order to show you why they think you're acting in bad faith. The "but it's all statistical, I wasn't talking about female Googlers" isn't a valid defense either: if I were to argue that men are more likely to be rapists than women (statistically true) and therefore companies should abstain from hiring men (or at the very least, quarantine them to be safe and avoid "false negatives") in order to reduce workplace rape, men would rightfully feel insulted and write me off as crazy. "You're more likely to be a rapist" is a lesser insult than "You're a rapist" but it's still one, and hiding behind the adverb "statistically" doesn't change that.
The "implications" and "connecting the dots" that you're doing is a means of construction a strawman. What you allege Damore tried to imply is not correct.
For your first alleged implication, remember he wrote that Google "lowered the bar by reducing the false negative rate." You're relying on deceptive quotations right off the bat. Regardless, the claim that discriminatory diversity programs that boost female applicants' chances of getting an offer necessarily implies that female candidates who get offers are less qualified is untrue. Say a company introduces a policy that when men pass all the interviews, the company flips a coin and if heads they get an offer and no offer if it's tails. Women just get an offer after passing the interviews. Does this discriminate in favor of women? Absolutely. Does this make the women who got offers less qualified? Only if you consider luck to be a qualification. Lastly, if Googlers were offended by a correct statement about the company's discriminatory hiring practices then they direct their offense to the recruiters or HR people that instituted those discriminatory practices.
Yet again, in the second purported implication you're trying to claim that Damore wrote that female employees are less fit. This is not correct on two points. One, Damore wasn't writing about Google employees or women in tech. He was writing about all women, worldwide. And second, he didn't write that they are less fit to be in high stress roles. He claimed that these thoroughly studied differences in personality make the average woman less likely to want to be in those roles. Again, Damore wrote about preferences - the things that affect the choices that people make - not fitness.
Your last paragraph is difficult to follow and stretches my willingness to assume you're participating in good faith:
> But the implication is still clear as day. Defending yourself behind "but that's not what I said" doesn't work: people are not stupid and can connect the dots, even if they aren't willing to take your reasoning apart in order to show you why they think you're acting in bad faith.
Because you're to connect the dots in a way that does not hold true. Your reasoning behind reaching these "implications" does not hold up to scrutiny. And in doing so, you're stuffing words into another person's mouth.
> The "but it's all statistical, I wasn't talking about female Googlers" isn't a valid defense either
Women that choose to go into technology aren't in the scope of what Damore is talking about. Female Googlers (at least, in engineering which is what Damore was writing about) are part of the section of women that want to go into technology. Damore is not writing about their ability or their preferences. He's writing about why the group of women that want to go into technology is smaller than the group of men that want to go into technology. This does not say anything about the former besides its relative size compared to the latter.
Let me put this in simpler terms: The majority of both men and women don't go into tech. Say 99% of men go into fields other than tech, and 99.75% of women go into fields other than tech. Men and women are nearly identical, almost all of them don't go into tech. Saying that small minority that do is larger among men as compared to women due to innate preferences is an explanation as to why we have 99% vs. 99.75%. It is making no statement, whatsoever, about the capability of the 0.25% of women and 1.0% of men that do go into tech.
> I wasn't talking about female Googlers" isn't a valid defense either: if I were to argue that men are more likely to be rapists than women (statistically true) and therefore companies should abstain from hiring men (or at the very least, quarantine them to be safe and avoid "false negatives") in order to reduce workplace rape, men would rightfully feel insulted and write me off as crazy. "You're more likely to be a rapist" is a lesser insult than "You're a rapist" but it's still one, and hiding behind the adverb "statistically" doesn't change that.
I'm a man, and I am not at all offended by that statement. It's factually correct. Whether or not I a rape a woman is something within my control, so I am not at all offended when people point out that men commit rape orders of magnitude more often than women. Saying "men are more likely to be a rapist" is not at all the same thing as saying "you're more likely to be a rapist" to individual men. In fact, not only am I not offended by such statements I would like to remind those men that do take offense to such a statement that it is factually correct and that we should not take honest assessment of the behavior of men as a whole as personal insults.
And if the men in your social circles really would write you off as crazy then those men have some serious insecurity about discussing sexual assault. It probably means that conversations they should be having, aren't being had. I'm deeply concerned by this last point, because this inability to distinguish between society-wide assessments and statements made directly to one's person effectively makes it impossible to discuss many social issues.
>Say a company introduces a policy that when men pass all the interviews, the company flips a coin and if heads they get an offer and no offer if it's tails. Women just get an offer after passing the interviews. Does this discriminate in favor of women? Absolutely. Does this make the women who got offers less qualified? Only if you consider luck to be a qualification.
This example is completely made up and does not appear on the memo. There is no reason to think Damore was thinking about examples like this when he was talking about "lowering the bar", nor is it clear what he meant by "reducing the false negative rate". "Reducing the false negative rate" in a way that doesn't involve "lowering the skill bar" is either an admission that Google hires its applicants in a completely nonsensical way past a certain interview stage and that doesn't transpire at all from the memo. It could be true, but there's no reason to think he thought this, at all.
>Yet again, in the second purported implication you're trying to claim that Damore wrote that female employees are less fit. This is not correct on two points. One, Damore wasn't writing about Google employees or women in tech. He was writing about all women, worldwide. And second, he didn't write that they are less fit to be in high stress roles. He claimed that these thoroughly studied differences in personality make the average woman less likely to want to be in those roles. Again, Damore wrote about preferences - the things that affect the choices that people make - not fitness.
I didn't claim "Damore wrote that female employees are less fit". I claimed he strongly implied that female employees were less likely to be fit. (Talk about putting words in other people's mouth.) Again, I don't see how that could not be the case given the previous two assertions. And again, that's not just my opinion, but the opinion of the National Labor Relations Board.
>Let me put this in simpler terms: The majority of both men and women don't go into tech. Say 99% of men go into fields other than tech, and 99.75% of women go into fields other than tech. Men and women are nearly identical, almost all of them don't go into tech. Saying that small minority that do is larger among men as compared to women due to innate preferences is an explanation as to why we have 99% vs. 99.75%. It is making no statement, whatsoever, about the capability of the 0.25% of women and 1.0% of men that do go into tech.
Thank you I took statistics 101 too and got that the first time, but it's not the reason his firing was justified. I admit that "innate differences" is the part that got the most people riled up (partly because of the underlying sexism, mostly for the bad science; notice how not a single evolutionary biologist - not psychologist - agreed with him) but it was mostly ignored in the decision of the NLRB.
>Saying "men are more likely to be a rapist" is not at all the same thing as saying "you're more likely to be a rapist" to individual men.
If you can't possibly imagine why saying "people with an innate quality you possess are more likely to be bad" could be offending, you probably need to hone up on your social skills. If someone explains over ten pages how people with innate quality X are more likely to be bad, with only a little disclaimer that the magical words "statistically" and "populations" make it all okay to say, and it doesn't raise any red flags, you definitely need to pause and ask yourself: "Is everyone collectively mad and only I am correct, or did I mess something up?" I mean it, sincerely.
> This example is completely made up and does not appear on the memo. There is no reason to think Damore was thinking about examples like this when he was talking about "lowering the bar", nor is it clear what he meant by "reducing the false negative rate". "Reducing the false negative rate" in a way that doesn't involve "lowering the skill bar" is either an admission that Google hires its applicants in a completely nonsensical way past a certain interview stage and that doesn't transpire at all from the memo. It could be true, but there's no reason to think he thought this, at all.
I'll give an example of this that I've encountered at several companies. We tag women and URM candidates as "diverse". For entry level candidates from non-traditional backgrounds (majored in something other than CS, EE, Math, etc. or learned coding in a boot camp) interviews are only given to diverse candidates. Non diverse candidates need to come from traditional backgrounds. For phone screens, we broadly grade on a Non, Maybe, and Yes scale. For diverse candidates if a candidate gets a second chance at the phone screen if they scored a Maybe. But the on-site interview remains the same.
So does this system discriminate in favor of diverse candidates? Absolutely, at several stages of the interview process candidates' chances at progressing are directly reduced by a non-diverse status. But does it affect the strength of recruited candidates? No. We don't generally consider the phone screen to be useful beyond assessing a coarse grained litmus for whether or not the candidate has a chance to succeed at the onsite. The final offer decisions is made based solely on the one-site interview performance.
It "lowers the bar by reducing the false negative rate" without affecting the quality bar because it only increases the rate of false negatives - that is, the people who could have passed the onsite interview but failed. Asian and White men who came from non-traditional backgrounds or fumbled the first phone interview but could have passed a second and the subsequent on-site are excluded. Diverse candidates, which includes all women as well as men that come from URM do not get erroneously excluded at those stages, thus reducing the false negative rate. The false positive rate remains unchanged: nobody gets a free pass at the stage that is used to test qualification for the job. I really hope I've made this point clear because you really do think that any lowering of the false negative rate necessarily results in lowered caliber of hires, then this is a statement that applies to many of my co-workers.
There are some that don't think the interview process should be discriminating on the basis or race or gender, but that's it's own conversation. The point remains, that what Damore wrote did not imply that these women were less skilled. He was pointing out the existence of policies like these.
As for the exact policies, remember that the intended audience for this memo was Gooogle employees and we read it in the context of being leaked out of this intended audience. From the footnotes of this memo
> Stretch, BOLD, CSSI, Engineering Practicum (to an extent), and several other Google funded internal and external programs are for people with a certain gender or race. (next bullet point) Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create zero-sum struggles between orgs.
I know that he's talking about with respect to OKRs: orgs were assigned "representation OKRs" that set a goal of achieving specific percentages with regards to race and gender. He's saying that this has the potential to cause discrimination, and that a better way is to try and target positive responses for inclusion on employee surveys. I don't know what "Stretch, BOLD, CSSI, Engineering Practicum" are but the intended audience probably did.
As for the science, why are you emphasizing the opinion of biologists on how he applied psychology research? Biology is the study of organic life. Everything from how proteins are made, to how fish get oxygen from waters, to things like pediatric biology studying children's development. Some biologists study human behavior, but most don't. By comparison psychologists study human behavior and interaction. And Damore was discussing sex differences in human behavior, so this is much more applicable to the realm of psychology than biology.
> If you can't possibly imagine why saying "people with an innate quality you possess are more likely to be bad" could be offending, you probably need to hone up on your social skills. If someone explains over ten pages how people with innate quality X are more likely to be bad, with only a little disclaimer that the magical words "statistically" and "populations" make it all okay to say, and it doesn't raise any red flags, you definitely need to pause and ask yourself: "Is everyone collectively mad and only I am correct, or did I mess something up?" I mean it, sincerely.
At this point I am genuinely wondering whether this conversation is in good faith, and I am not ashamed to say this to a 2 day old account.
If someone points to the fact that close to 100% of the people incarcerated for rape are men as evidence of sexism in the justice system, and another person objects and points to the fact that higher male sexual aggression are observed universally across all civilizations and that there is strong evidence that this behavior is largely the result of men's own actions rather than state injustice is the latter the bad guy? This is just absurd. Men do commit rape drastically more often that women, it's an unambiguous fact and I most of my co-workers would agree with it without. I'm a man in control of my own body and impulses. All I need to do to avoid being a rapist is to not rape anyone. I don't find it particularly hard. While I'm disappointed by the behavior of other men demonstrated this statistic to a degree, it does not make any statement about the character of those men that don't rape.
The words "statistically" and "populations" aren't just disclaimers made to make otherwise sexist statements okay. It means that the statements in question are about the aggregate behavior of many people. Saying that statistically women are less likely to commit violence than men isn't making any sort of statement about individual women or individual men. Women commit ~5-10% of murders last time I checked. So there definitely are some women capable of committing acts of violence, but the point remains men still commit the majority of violence by a factor of 3-5x at the least. And most importantly, it doesn't say anything at all about the overwhelming majority of men and women that don't commit acts of violence.
And you should take your own advice as far as that last sentence goes. Polls of the general adult population showed that 61% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats, and 56% of independents responded that Google was wrong to have fired Damore [1]. Along racial lines this wasn't much different either. 58% of whites, 49% of Hispanics, and 55% of Blacks responded that Google was wrong to have fired him. The memo was definitely controversial, but the majority of the population thought the memo did not justify firing.
Could Google have tried to play mediator with the media, by explaining like you just did, and encouraging a more enlightened and less sensational outcome?
And therein lies the problem: there was no misonogy there.
It seems it was either an honest misguided attempt to help or an honest well guided attempt to help (I leave it to you to judge) that was shot down.
It is ironic that the same people who'd happily blame all men, happily blame all white people except themselves etc are so dead set on claiming that everyone else is something *ist.
Many of us aren't. I've put effort into the issue myself to help women get jobs in tech. For no other reason than wanting to help them - and maybe the company. More than once.
But I'm so tired of being told I'm a racist and what not. By people like on PyCon, the super privileged woman who got two devs fired over hearsay while posting far worse stuff on Twitter herself.
I guess it is this mindless stupid hypocrisy we react to.
Am I privileged? You bet! Compared to 94% of the people in the world I'm privileged.
Does that mean I should be ok with being picked on by ten times more privileged people working for Google?
My answer is no. By the time someone joins Google or other similar companies they can safely stop calling other people privileged whatever race and gender those others have. Edit: except, on a case-by-case basis for their colleagues, certain politicians and movie stars and other exceptions :-)
Pointing out that statistical variance between female and male hiring is influenced by behavioral differences with men and women isn't misogyny. In a free society, where men and women are encouraged to take whatever career they want, men and women tend to choose careers in differing ratios. Unless you think women should be forced against their will to be software developers?
It's a smokescreen because it ignores the history of computer science and software engineering. Which is to say statistically, pre-1984 there were a lot of women getting into computer science and the field in general had a much larger proportion of female software engineers. [1]
This directly debunks the claims that women avoid software development for biological reasons unless they suddenly had a massive biological shift in 1984. It's a silly argument often used as a way of painting all women as somehow being less technologically inclined and one I am no stranger to.
pre-1984 most people in computer science were coming from adjacent professional fields and cross-trained. The computer programs in colleges weren't able to keep up with early and even current demands and that's a lot of the differences.
If you look at Scandinavian countries where equality of opportunity are enshrined in their culture, there's a broad variance of career choices between men and women as a whole.
Aside: I do feel that at least some of the differences can be attributed to the toy marketing which put the girl toys in the "pink aisle" and the computer games with the "boy toys" ... this has shaped a lot of culture and I think we're seeing things starting to normalize. But even of those women that I've worked with in software more than half move towards testing and management or out of the field within 3-5 years post-college.
The culture for software crafting tends to be one of strong negotiation and opinion, which tends to be unnatural for many women. I would like to see more education/training programs for women to get better and more comfortable with asserting and injecting opinion in a group setting. I think that would help, it still won't increase the natural variance, but it would probably keep more women in the development side of the coin.
All of the statements about "men" or "women" above are generalities, there are broad exceptions to everything said. There's a difference between outliers at under 20% and the norm.
Earlier today there were an article looking at gender ratios in professions between 1950 and 2015. Some professions flipped between being male and female dominated several times, and this without massive biological shift of both women and men, and multiple times.
A theory that tries to explain gender segregation need to explain why profession flip and sometimes oscillate between male and female dominance, why the gender equality paradox in places like Sweden where 85% of both women and men work in gender segregated work places, and why even within the same work place women and men tend to gender segregate even within the same profession (such as teachers gender segregating based on teaching subject).
A really old but fairly accepted theory is that a person feel more safe and confident when in the dominant group. People will thus have preference to such places. The theory is pretty good in explaining why people gender segregate but not why professions flip between male and female dominance. A common theory to explain that is than gender roles pushes men towards high income professions and socially punish those that don't, creating a preference for men but not women to prioritize high income professions over professions that offer other benefits.
It absolutely does not debunk the claim that women are innately less inclined to go into tech. Pre 1984, many professions like law, medicine, and more either were not accessible to women or were not viewed as socially acceptable. This resulted in displacement of women from these fields into other ones, like computing. Increased gender equality, especially in the 90s, led to more women going into fields like law, medicine, publishing, and more. Since double majors are rare, this increase of women in those fields necessarily comes with a reduction in women in other fields. Counterintuitively, the higher rates of women in computing during the 1970s and early 1980s can be viewed as the product of sexism that existed in much of society. This pattern holds true globally. The greater amount of gender equality a country has, the lower the share of women in engineering and technology.
While I am not pleased by lower diversity in computing as a result of this, I cannot bring myself to condemn the fact that women are freer to choose careers even if the result is less women in CS.
The technical term that Google used was "fired for promoting harmful gender stereotypes" which is more subtle than misogyny. It's not clear to me that James Damore was misogynistic, but rather did a very poor job of articulating his belief that women and men are different, that those differences could help explain why there are highly skewed gender ratios in tech, and then tried to justify this by citing a wide range of psychology literature, much of which is (IMO) questionable. He didn't help his case by using terms that trigger people, like neuroticism, which have a specific meaning in psychological literature (remember, he got kicked out of Harvard's Systems Bio program, so he presumably had some exposure to biological/medical literature) but a very different connotation in popular culture.
What amazes me about this document (which continues to polarize people) is how many different ways it's been interpreted. People impute their own beliefs onto his language.
The reality is Damore did an excellent job of articulating his beliefs. He wrote carefully, politely, cited his sources, used precise language, repeatedly clarified that he actually agreed with Google's goals but not their methods, and correctly anticipated how people might try to mischaracterise what he wrote. I've seen much much worse essays than that one.
The whole idea he lacks "emotional intelligence" is just a sop to people who went on the attack because he's an ideological enemy. His intelligence is just fine, he simply is less tolerant of unintellectual nonsense masquerading as morality than most people are. And why should he not be? Damore challenged Google to rational debate and too many Googler's completely failed. The lack of intelligence isn't on Damores side.
“I realized that my team simply did not have much to say on the issue of police brutality. This was odd—mostly because I’d watched them debate countless other topics, newsworthy and not, with a proud deftness and alacrity,” the memo reads. “From disappearing Malaysian airplanes to the spread of Ebola to the marriages and divorces of celebrities I’d never heard of, my teammates always had something to say about everything. But when it came to the violent policing of black bodies, they were silent.”
It is perfectly reasonable for employees to choose to abstain from discussing fraught political subjects at work.
> I realized that my team simply did not have much to say on the issue of police brutality. This was odd—mostly because I’d watched them debate countless other topics, newsworthy and not, with a proud deftness and alacrity,” [...] particularly after big news events such as the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and during the ensuing protests against police brutality.
Is Michael Brown a good example of police brutality though? Maybe they didn't have much to say because it turns out a lot of the facts there have been twisted and embellished, to put it mildly. Maybe they just politely refused to discuss it at work?
It is interesting he brings up Garner and Michael Brown. I think Garner was a good example of police overstepping the mark that everyone could agree on and Brown was much controversial. But weirdly enough it seemed that Brown was pushed more than Garner by activists. I think this is quite common with activist organisations. They seem to deliberately push more controversial causes. I'm not sure if this is because more controversial causes are more effective or it is because there are weird personal incentives in play.
Also, it could be that no-one wants to bring attention to negative effects from a popular policy. Garner had the attention of police because he was selling untaxed cigarettes. Taxing cigarettes is quite popular and I guess no-one wants to explicitly bite the bullet that some people need to die to have these laws on the book. In a country with a population over 300 million there is a good chance people are going to randomly die from run-ins with law enforcement over non-violent crime. All law is a trade off between the good effects and the bad effects but a lot of people believe any serious bad effect means the law is immoral.
This has a strong undercurrent of "you're either with us or against us" where no one is allowed to simply be neutral. While I understand the theory that doing nothing means you support the status quo, forcing people to explicitly choose a side more often than not ends up pushing them to support the other side, which as a result grows stronger in power. Forcing someone who doesn't want to support you to support you generally breeds resentment and generates negative value for your cause. Those who can be pushed into support tend to be the first to abandon your cause when the opportunity arises. Welcoming those who are leaning towards your direction instead of trying to force those who are ambivalent has a much higher return on investment of your time and resources.
An accusatory and pushy street preacher does not win people over, rather the opposite. Self-righteous crusaders have historically failed to grasp this fact of basic psychology.
There was a stretch from 2014-15 that made it really difficult to go to work on a day to day basis for me. There is something psychologically triggering about seeing people who look like you routinely killed by the state, regardless of the circumstances or politics.
I began to feel some contempt for my white co-workers despite knowing that they had nothing to do it. I did not expect nor wanted to have a conversion with them about race and police brutality, and I don't know many of my black friends who would to be honest -- perhaps Google just has an argumentative culture.
> perhaps Google just has an argumentative culture
I think this is probably the salient point here. Google is trying to create a "cool culture" where everyone can speak their mind and spend endless hours around each other. I don't like to work at companies where everyone "is a family" or uses their coworkers as their primary friend group. As much as I respect and enjoy the company of my coworkers, there is a strong chance we are not all compatible as close, personal friends but can still make progress for the company together. I prefer that my close relationships are not intertwined with what I use to pay my bills.
As a non-American I don't see this. The American police kills roughly as many whites per day as the Norwegian police have killed during their entire existence (it is 1 if you wonder). Making this about race only hides the elephant in the room: the American police is extremely brutal. It shouldn't be this way in a western nation, the police doesn't kill that many except for third world countries and USA. Even if we eliminated the racism and thus halved the number of blacks killed by the police it would still be a horrible amount of blacks killed!
I think it's really difficult to see this as a non American, especially from a nation has homogeneous as Norway. The question must be asked: why is American policing so brutal? Why is the criminal justice system geared towards punishment instead of rehabilitation? Why are so many members of Congress former prosecutors? Why did the 13th amendment -- which abolished slavery, make an exception for those convicted of a crime?
I don't understand why this would matter. Why would homogeneity of the population have anything to do with how many people the police kill of the privileged race? Does the existence of black people in America increase the number of whites killed by police?
When we compare crime and such between USA and Europe you always say "But USA is so diverse!", isn't that racism? I mean, you are basically saying that you have to live with crime, murder and such when you have a diverse population. Or do I misunderstand you?
It's my belief that racist discriminatory policies have led to an "underclass" of people, who are primarily minorities, that are criminalized more often and deprived of services that would ultimately reduce crime. So yes, due to discrimination, the diversity of the US contributes to higher crime rates.
There was a study recently produced that showed that simply installing street lights in a neighborhood reduced crime dramatically, when you take into consideration that installation would be funded by local property taxes, and that majority minority neighborhoods have lower property values, partly due to post war discriminatory housing policy, it is clear that there is somewhat of a self fulfilling cycle here.
Wow. I never commented I HN before, but I just have to now: Bias and prejudice IS human nature. It has nothing to do with racism. People can and do naturally discrimate on all sorts of differences like class, nationality, skin color, etc. I seen it first hand growing up in a almost completely homogenous society how any visible difference increases distrust and tension. Mind you, this is all natural human behavior, but it doesn't always make it right.
So it's completely natural that a country as diverse as America would automatically balkanize itself along class, national, and racial lines.
Homogeneity generally engenders more trust. More trust generally means less crime. This effect can be observed across the world. There are benefits to diversity, of course, but there are also downsides. Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Bosnia, and and Burma have all been riven by ethnic conflict as a result of their diversity, to give a few examples. The USA (and now also the UK, and some other Western European countries) are outliers when it comes to peaceful diversification, aka large-scale migration, and even there I would say the experiment has yet to deliver a conclusive result.
What do you mean by homogeneity? Do you mean as opposed to heterogeneity such as what is found in the many different cultures, peoples and language across Swiss cantons or German landers, or is it really just "people looking different from one another"?
I would refer you to the Putnam study from another comment, which defines homogeneity/heterogeneity in terms of ethnicity.
Certainly ethnicity is a fluid concept. The language, value system, and cultural context of a Texan may differ from that of a Minnesotan. However, I think we can agree that your average Texan or Minnesotan will likely have a greater common understanding if paired together than with your average Swiss or German person.
Your study is based in the States, which has a long history of segregating cultures and even language according to ethnic lines. On the other hand, I mean is that both Switzerland and Germany have a diversity of peoples, cultures and languages (e.g. Switzerland itself has 4 official languages and German has a myriad of dialects) and many citizens of these countries consider themselves pretty diverse in that regard though they are mostly white, but is that what people mean by "diversity" when they talk about "population heterogeneity"? Or is it just "diversity is when people have different skin tones and the more skin tones there are the more diverse it is"?
> Why did the 13th amendment -- which abolished slavery, make an exception for those convicted of a crime?
Because conscripted labor was an independent tradition going back thousands of years. Compare the legal status of compelling people to work on the roads.
There was also an exception for the military, though that wasn't written into the 13th amendment.
Easy for Norway to say. America is 60x bigger population-wise, 30x bigger geographic-wise, and some order-of-magnitude more diverse (10x? 100x?) racially.
While I agree America can do better, comparing the US to Norway is like saying "Yeah, our Norway.com servers have only crashed once. Twitter.com would do well to copy how we do things; they seem to have servers crashing way more often than we do" which completely ignore issues that come into play at orders of magnitude higher scales - for if you put Norway.com under the same strain as twitter, Norway.com's servers would be crashing left and right as well.
Right, so if they had the same level of police brutality you would have 60 deaths in the history of American police, or about 1 killing per year. Even if the police were racists and killed twice as many blacks, that would still just be one black dead every few years, then it wouldn't matter.
The rest of the differences are not important here. Racial diversity shouldn't be related to crime or shootings.
> Right, so if they had the same level of police brutality you would have 60 deaths in the history of American police, or about 1 killing per year
Only if problems scale exactly linearly and there are no side effect emergent behaviors you have to account for. Otherwise when a big tech company goes from 1M to 10M users, they just need 10x as many servers, right? Problem solved.
Nope, in real life each order of magnitude has required serious, difficult engineering to overcome the challenges, you should read up on how companies like Amazon/Facebook have scaled with users. I'll give you a hint though - they didn't just draw a line and extrapolate how many servers they would need for each year.
Otherwise you could just say: "Oh, New Hampshire has a homocide rate of 1 per 100,000. New Hampshire has a population of 1 million, therefore that's 10 deaths per million, therefore by simple extrapolation, the USA should only have 3000 homocides per year!"
This is a very narrow view of things. If scale in real life worked like that, easy and obvious solution would be to break up US into 60 pieces and you'd have 60 Norways, right? Nope. US problems are due to culture, not size.
In fact, the US is broken up into 50 pieces, and some pieces fare much better than others in terms of violence/suicide per capita depending on the region.
> Nope. US problems are due to culture, not size.
Probably a combination of both. Culture isn't a thing that can be easily changed, though.
that's true, but I don't think a scale issue is the heart of the difference. Otherwise, for example, you'd think there would be very little police violence in rural America, but that is not true.
I am assuming that Norway was chosen to provide an extreme comparison. Go ahead and compare the US to a few other developed nations. Hell, compare it to a few under-developed nations too. Hopefully you will notice a pattern.
In what way can you compare the US to other countries fairly? That's like comparing Microsoft to small businesses and showing that the small businesses have lower bug counts and more efficient processes. Well of course! It's not easy to run a huge company as efficiently as a small one.
The police are brutal because the civilians are brutal. It's a two way street. Has a Norwegian police officer ever died at the hands of an angry driver? And no, it's not always "cause guns" (though it certainly exacerbates things). In Colorado, a civilian (hunter) killed another civilian with a crossbow on the side of a highway after a fit of road rage. It could have easily been an officer (and indeed officers frequently die at the hands of civilians)
This justification of brutal policing is disgusting in any context. There is no excuse for brutal policing. And the "diverse population" justification has been racist from the moment it was first used.
This is the factual context: The number of police feloniously killed each year is under 50 and falling. The number of people killed by police is over 1100 per year and rising, despite overall falling crime rates.
US police have abysmal performance in this. They are brutal, savage, and unprofessional compared to any other developed country. Militarization, the Drug War, and recent political exhortations to be "tougher" do not help.
Have you seen the homicide rate in America? You cannot quell that level of violence with hugs.
Police in the US operate in an environment where every person they encounter may have the means to kill them within seconds. This is not to ignore police brutality, but these details matter.
To compare the situation to a tiny homogeneous country where guns are illegal is silly.
Mea culpa, my figure of 10,000x was not per capita and assumed that the above comment stating that Norwegian police has only ever killed 1 person was true, when in fact rate has been about 1 per seven years for the last couple of decades and there is not data available before that.
But your 16x figure from Wikipedia is also not accurate -- it overestimates the Norwegian rate by about a factor of 7 for some reason. Using the historical data at the bottom of the page suggests that the rate of police killing in the US is around 60x higher than Norway, or 150x if we assume that there were no killings in Norway between 2017 and now. This is considerably greater than the 10x difference in homicide rate (you quoted that as 45x but as I said previously that is for gun homicide only, and you haven't given any reason why that is more relevant).
A couple of paragraphs of back-and-forth and we're already adding some nuance to the stats.
This is my point. The data needs to be understood and contextualised before we form conclusions as to why the disparity exists.
As for the reason to focus on gun homicide: in 93% of cases where US police use deadly force the suspect is armed with a weapon[0]. This extremely high prevalence of lethal weapons, and the immediate threat to life it implies, almost certainly contributes to the high number of police shootings.
This threat simply doesn't exist in other countries, where even if there may be a high level of gun ownership, gun use is restricted and citizens are predominantly unarmed.
> There is something psychologically triggering about seeing people who look like you routinely killed by the state, regardless of the circumstances or politics.
Then you'll be glad to find the coverage is exaggerated:
Interestingly, seeing it is what is really difficult and triggering. 2014-2015 wasn't some unusual flareup in police violence, it was merely a flareup in visibility.
> There is something psychologically triggering about seeing people who look like you routinely killed by the state, regardless of the circumstances or politics.
Yes, the media indeed loves to intentionally psychologically trigger people.
Police brutality happens to white people and latino people as well (at lower rates, but in greater numbers), but such stories wouldn't psychologically trigger/racially divide people and so they remain unpublished.
It was literally a national story 2 or 3 weeks ago about a cop who suffocated and killed a white guy who called the cops on himself because he was off his medication, having a mental health episode, and needed help.
Also we are currently at a point where you can find weekly stories about police abusing Latino people (typically in conjunction with ICE). No idea how you came to the conclusion that these stories are unpublished.
> Police brutality happens to white people and latino people as well (at lower rates, but in greater numbers), but such stories wouldn't psychologically trigger/racially divide people and so they remain unpublished
Law enforcement abuse stories about treatment of white and (especially) Latino people are published regularly (rarely, with white people, is there a basis even for suspicion that the act is racially motivated), and frequently are divisive (even, if when it is about whites, not usually about race/ethnicity).
> such stories wouldn't psychologically trigger/racially divide people and so
being profit-seeking corporations, american news is pursuing eyeballs and clicks. truthiness, accuracy, bias, etc. are all variables in the profit equation, and not always a major influence. if idpol (or whatever) is stirring up the viewership, it will influence how they approach the "news", in different ways depending on who the producers view as their principle audience.
inserting the whole "seeking to divide" as a concrete motive seems like a dogwhistle (particularly being a narrative beloved of antisemites).
Does anyone else feel uncomfortable around people that talk about politics at work?
I would much rather talk about the latest sports balls games. There's so many conversations that you can have and many different statistics. You can even have sports balls debates that are enjoyable such as who is the best ball thrower.
Yes, don't discuss religion, sex, or politics at work. This used to be professionalism 101 (outside the context of workplace discrimination/HR, obviously)
No, because that's even worse. Sports are incredibly boring and mindless; I'd rather talk about paint drying than some stupid, pointless sports game. At least politics is something that actually affects everyone whether they want it to or not. Only a minority of the population gives a rat's ass about sports, though the sports fans always delude themselves into thinking that everyone likes them, and try to push sports on everyone constantly.
How'd you like it if I kept trying to talk to you about my favorite bands?
I had an opinion similar to you, I didn't care about the drama of one team or another, what the significance of some move, or kick, or foul was. It seemed like just an exercise in physical prowess, and just a matter of genetic skill.
It irritated me to be asked about sports or asked what I was a fan of...
I grew a respect for sports after trying a few of them. From martial arts like Kendo or Jiujitsu, to high level chess, with enough practice you learn the rules and get an intuitive understanding, and then you see.
You see the physicality of a sport and you know how amazing that physical feat is, because you've tried something like it. You can understand on a deeper level the drama of the moment between two opponents as they are deciding what strategy, tactic and move to employ.
I may not always enjoy talking about some niche that someone else cares about, but I am now at least somewhat aware that they are trying to connect with me and they care about it because they probably know something that I don't.
>It irritated me to be asked about sports or asked what I was a fan of...
>I grew a respect for sports after trying a few of them. From martial arts like Kendo or Jiujitsu, to high level chess, with enough practice you learn the rules and get an intuitive understanding, and then you see.
Try talking to a football fan about jiujitsu or chess and see how far that conversation goes.
I can respect the physical skill needed to play a sport, but that doesn't mean I care to talk to someone about it, and it still irritates me to be asked what sports I follow and get a weird look when I say I don't. I don't think people are freaks if they don't listen to the same music I do, but sports fans absolutely treat people like freaks if they don't follow any sports.
I don’t listen to music. Let me clarify, if I need to drown something out I put on the same half-dozen Classical music pieces that I can ignore while working, but outside that I do not listen to music. I listen to podcasts and audio books when commuting, playing games, cleaning, etc. I cannot tell you the number of times I have been told I was insane, weird, a serial killer, etc. all because I don’t listen to music. So, yeah, not just sports fans who treat people like trash if they don’t partake in their hobby.
>I cannot tell you the number of times I have been told I was insane, weird, a serial killer, etc. all because I don’t listen to music. So, yeah, not just sports fans who treat people like trash if they don’t partake in their hobby.
I'm sorry if some music lovers treated you this way. But did this happen at work? Musical tastes tend to be diverse these days, so I never hear people talking about music at work unless they already know the other person shares their particular taste. I talk about music with one of my coworkers, but that's because we found out with our shared music libraries (we have music libraries we bring to work and are then able to share with others on the network) that we like a lot of the same stuff. We even ended up going to a couple of concerts together. But again, this wasn't because anyone was badgering anyone about talking about prog-metal bands, it was because we found out through our music shares that we liked the same bands. Our coworkers mostly listen to other music (a few don't seem to listen to any), so we never talk music with them. In short, I just have a hard time imagining people these days talking much about music at work.
Then talk music? TV? There is a reason that "water cooler talk" is the conversational equivalent of elevator music. You need to get along with people on a professional basis to accomplish a goal, and things that are divisive and hinder that should be discouraged. Politics creates rifts in families, of course it will cause work problems.
I'm not disagreeing that talking about politics at work is a minefield, at best.
However, trying to get everyone to talk about sports is annoying as hell. I'd rather have ugly political arguments than talk about some stupid sports game; that's my point. You're trying to paint sports as some kind of thing to unite over, but I'm pointing out that it isn't, all it does is create another division, between the sports fans and everyone else.
Now, of course, I don't care if a few sports fans have a conversation among themselves at work. However, with some of them it seems to be a religion of sorts and they have to push it on everyone.
> At least politics is something that actually affects everyone whether they want it to or not.
Everyone need an outlet for team loyalty and deep emotional investments in outcomes. Spend that drive worrying about what color someone's jersey is, so you don't do it worrying what color their tie is. Then you can spend your calm, cold, and rational cycles towards politics.
> Over the last 5 years I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of ‘fit’ and so much more
This sounds more like a description of (the sad reality of) American society than it does an anomaly unique to one company.
When a company reaches Google-size, I imagine the challenges of insulating the company culture from the negative parts of broader society would become quite difficult.
That's not to say that Google bears no responsibility for this. And it definitely tarnishes the overwhelmingly positive hollywood / silicon valley stereotype of Life As A Googler.
> “I realized that my team simply did not have much to say on the issue of police brutality. This was odd—mostly because I’d watched them debate countless other topics, newsworthy and not, with a proud deftness and alacrity,” the memo reads. “From disappearing Malaysian airplanes to the spread of Ebola to the marriages and divorces of celebrities I’d never heard of, my teammates always had something to say about everything. But when it came to the violent policing of black bodies, they were silent.”
I don't think it's reasonable to expect your co-workers to openly protest any issue. People have families to take care of, paychecks to earn and rent to pay. They for the most part, want to do their job with minimum of drama. I'm sure there are a million issues that the memo author was not openly protesting that other co-workers may have cared deeply about. I would hope they wouldn't hold that against the author.
I'm not questioning whether this person experienced racism at Google, as that seems likely in an organization of that size. I just don't think it's ok to be upset about your co-workers not being openly vocal in the workplace about a political issue you feel strongly about.
There seems to be a strong push to politicize silence that seems very unhealthy. You don't know how people feel and act outside of work and the public sphere. Silence on an issue is not a political statement.
>They for the most part, want to do their job with minimum of drama
I think this here is the point where the author would disagree. Google employees and the staff at many larger tech companies produces their fair share of drama on virtually any political topic, and that's what makes this more off-putting.
I'm not black but I come from a fairly poor background, and in the tech field obviously that is rather the exception than the norm and I've noticed a similar thing when it comes to class issues.
You have people who start political mailing lists on gender pronouns and technicalities that nobody on the street has ever thought about, but then that same person talks about homeless people in front of the office with a sort of callousness and elitism that is pretty breathtaking.
If we were just talking about your random corporate culture where everybody just sips their coffee and comments on nothing then in a way that'd make these things much less noticeable. But when you have workforces that are hyper-vigilant and politically correct show disregard on topics that touch a really wide population, like the African American community in the US in this case, that makes for a stark contrast.
I'm also from a poor background and agree with a lot of this. It was a huge mistake for Google (and other valley companies) to politicize the workplace. No one will be happy in the end. They should have stayed focused on being excited about making the best technology they can, background and politics aside.
Pandora's box is open now and I don't think they'll be able to reign it in. Thankfully, this leaves an opportunity for another generation of companies to return to a technology first message and eat the large, politically quagmired megacorp's lunch.
> It was a huge mistake for Google (and other valley companies) to politicize the workplace.
I wasn't aware this was a thing. Did Google openly support one candidate or party? How did they promote politics in the workplace?
> Pandora's box is open now and I don't think they'll be able to reign it in. Thankfully, this leaves an opportunity for another generation of companies to return to a technology first message and eat the large, politically quagmired megacorp's lunch.
How? What do new companies change or do differently? Are the FANGY companies doomed by a toxic culture they can't undo? And why can't they?
Some of the politicization at Google may have been born out of the "Bring your whole self to work" philosophy playing out on their internal Google+ network and "Coffee Beans" discussion forum. You can see many examples/screenshots of what was tolerated internally in the Damore lawsuit[1]. I've worked exclusively for large orgs (outside of the Bay Area) and it completely blows my mind.
Wow, just from briefly scrolling around I'm appalled by the sort of stuff that people are willing to put in writing and send to their coworkers at Google. e.g. managers admitting to having shit-lists of people that they won't let on their teams
What I dislike about conversations like this on HN, is that comments like the above don’t get downvoted because they are detrimental to the conversation, or because they are in some way a rules violation, but rather because people just don’t like them. It defeats the whole “moderation” purpose of self-moderation. And it happens every single time a political issue like racial bias in the tech industry is the topic at hand.
Maybe equating 'conservative views' to racism and sexism _is_ detrimental to this conversation?
We're talking on an article where an employee interpreted _silence_ as racism! There is a valid point that (non-bigoted) conservative opinions are being silenced.
i.e. Say you think that we should reduce the immigration rate, and wanted to discuss your reasons with your coworkers -- would you feel comfortable discussing that @ a SF tech company?
When racism and sexism are so disproportionately embraced by conservatives (e.g what views are espoused by white supremacists or proud boys or <insert recent alt-right mass shooter here>?) you must ask yourself what's _really_ detrimental to the conversation here.
> We're talking on an article where an employee interpreted _silence_ as racism! There is a valid point that (non-bigoted) conservative opinions are being silenced.
If you see a coworker being harassed and you do nothing, that's bad. Even if it doesn't make you a racist, if you see something and don't speak up you demonstrate lack of caring about your coworker. It's valid to point that out, is it not? How is pointing that out silencing conservative opinion?
It's not on people at work to be nice to you if your views are hurtful to those around you. The onus is on you to find out why most of the conscientious and smart people around you find your behavior and/or views abhorrent.
The problem is that your opinion doesn't exist in the a vacuum. If you talk about reducing immigration while saying little to nothing about the horrible treatment of people at our borders, then naturally people are going to take offense because you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely.
I've had many discussions with coworkers with me taking up both stances as a steel man and/or devil's advocate and not once have I felt uncomfortable about the discussion. You should be concerned about certain actions of very powerful people in high offices poisoning the well of discourse before you consider what you're trying to debate because context is everything. I find that is something frequently ignored when people discuss why they feel like they can't speak about certain things.
> If you talk about reducing immigration while saying little to nothing about the horrible treatment of people at our borders, then naturally people are going to take offense because you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely.
I don't care if people are offended. I don't think the topic about humane treatment is two-sided, so I have nothing to add. I think I have to figure out what I think about broader immigration issues, so I choose to talk about that.
I do not subscribe to the implicit ultimatum of "either you are interested in what I consider the most pressing issue, or you're implicitly supporting the opposition". You think it's an elephant in the room and I would say granted that's true, I don't think it's an argument that needs to be rehashed.
I think it will change toward the obvious resolution without additional fanfare (Trump will be gone within my lifetime), so I don't spend time on topics that I think are decided. Policy is always playing catch up. That's how this society works.
If you don't care if people are offended, then you're effectively saying that you give zero weight to their arguments and opinions. That's not a particularly good argumentative tactic and is a great way to ensure your argument is shut down from the get-go.
This isn't an implicit ultimatum either, this is about understanding and addressing the full context of a situation. If you're ignorant of certain aspects people aren't going to mind, but if you willingly try to ignore those aspects then people are going to wonder why.
It's like for example: Trying to talk about how to fix a large problem in a code base without understanding why code functions the way it does. If you just do a large scale refactor, then you break other portions of the system that expected certain behavior and now you have to do all sorts of retrofitting.
> If you don't care if people are offended, then you're effectively saying that you give zero weight to their arguments and opinions
That is only if their opinion is based on (or implied to be based on) their emotional state. Arguments based on emotion are basically zero weight for most philosophical issues (like what problems are more important than others). You have no right to know, what is more important to me, so I think the judgement is ignorant.
> That's not a particularly good argumentative tactic and is a great way to ensure your argument is shut down from the get-go.
My argument about what? My morality? I choose not to care about offending a specific group of people who have a specific interest. No apologies.
> Trying to talk about how to fix a large problem in a code base without understanding why code functions the way it does.
I'm not talking about the same project (or function) as you. One feeds into the other. Ultimately, there is a black-box assumption. I don't have to care about the later components doing their job, when looking at the function that is also complex. Someone should probably be looking at both, but it's not a moral imperative to look at all functions in the world.
What you care about is, by definition, dictated by your emotional state. I for example greatly care about issues that relate to poverty because I've experienced deep poverty before. What you effectively say by saying you don't care if you offend people is that you only care about things that are emotionally relevant to yourself. You touch upon this yourself:
>You have no right to know, what is more important to me, so I think the judgement is ignorant.
This is an argument made from emotion, not philosophically or logically. You're saying that X topic ranks higher emotionally than Y topic.
Which I mean, that's also going to vary based on the context and whom you're arguing with. There's nothing wrong with caring for certain topics than others but it's disengenuous to behave like you're above emotions while making an emotionally charged argument.
> What you care about is, by definition, dictated by your emotional state
I agree with that. Not sure how it's related to why someone else's state should influence my preferences.
> This is an argument made from emotion
It is not. You literally have no legal right. Without that information, you are literally ignorant and unable to make an argument about morality, from my perspective. Morality is personal, but it is a philosophy about maximizing the good across people and time, as I define it.
> There's nothing wrong with caring for certain topics than others but it's disengenuous to behave like you're above emotions while making an emotionally charged argument.
I disagree. I am going to assert that I am a human. I am not above emotion. I can and do, dismiss the arguments posed from an emotional basis. This is a little far away from where we started.
> you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely
I don't rank it above. I just don't think there's anything left to discuss. The moral failure is practical, not philosophical. This is of no interest to me, as I already know what I believe about it. I can and do talk about immigration, without reference and feel that I am on solid moral footing.
That's great advice - but it amounts to 'be careful and qualify your opinion to show you're _not_ racist'. That's exactly what people are complaining about.
The migrant detention issue has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of _legal_ immigration. Bringing it up does nothing other than to distract and prevent discussion on the original topic!
If we could just discuss issues _in good faith_ and stop with the name calling we might actually be able to solve some of them -- together.
I mean, if you're talking about racially charged topics (of which immigration unavoidably is) you should expect to have to be careful. I'm not sure what else to tell you.
The migrant detention issue absolutely relates to legal immigration because if you talk about reducing the number of legal immigrants, depending on your proposal that means people will be reclassified as illegal immigrants and subject to being detained.
You can't talk about immigration while trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Because when people point out the elephant and you ignore it or don't have an answer, then your argument is a poor one.
Food for thought, something can be political without directly referencing domestic politics and political parties. Definition: "the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power."
Discussing structural inequality is inherently political because it is a discussion about power.
However, I disagree with parent. You cannot have a diverse workforce that numbers the thousands and expect there not to be a discussion about power structures and inequity. Imagine if you applied that lens of thinking to a company that employs both blacks and whites in the Jim Crow era-- who loses?
"Bring your whole self to work". Example of people bringing their whole selves to work: When Trump won the election we had executives crying on stage talking about the catastrophe. Not something you would see at a conventional company, I best most executives didn't even mention the election in front of their employees.
Note that I didn't say that Google promotes a specific political party, just that it promotes people bringing politics to work.
>Did Google openly support one candidate or party?
Serious? I mean, you can be right or left as much as you like, but to ignore that Google has been entirely sided with the DNC is to just ignore reality. This isn't even getting into the recent leaks of Google search blacklists that overwhelmingly target conservative outlets [0]. Or their internal documents that talk literally and explicitly about "preventing the next Trump situation". [1]
I'm no Trump fan... But it's tough to stick your head in the sand here.
Here is Google's Eric Schmidt wearing a STAFF badge at Hillary Clinton's election night headquarters. [2]
It's a video with a senior Google engineer explaining the documents he turned over to DOJ, how he retrieved them, and those documents clearly viewable.
It's pretty hard to say they selectively edited anything here.
You're right, those are the leaked docs from June. Here is the one I meant to link, August's. The interview is alright, a little self-congratulatory at the end, but the documents are pretty hard to argue.
Every person can support whatever candidate or party they like. Same goes for companies, especially in a democracy like the US where big donors and big money are an essential part of every election. Should be accepted by everyone or generally frowned upon. So yeah, Eric Schmidt supporting is OK. As much as I don't like it but it would be ok as well if he had supported Trump.
You cannot avoid a politicized workplace because companies don't exist in a vacuum and neither do the workers. You can do your best to ensure things remain respectful but you can't avoid certain topics unless you outright refuse to hire people of color or minorities, in which case you achieve a political monoculture which is in itself a politicized workplace.
There is no such thing as an apolitical workplace or company.
> But when you have workforces that are hyper-vigilant and politically correct show disregard on topics that touch a really wide population, like the African American community in the US in this case, that makes for a stark contrast.
The company has made unambiguous statements of support for BLM yeaaars ago (tweeting "we need racial justice now" after talking about Castile and Sterling IIRC), and a company-wide meeting was interrupted by BLM protestors sanctioned by the company taking the stage (after IIRC Trayvon's shooting).
The author's complaint isn't that Google or its employees overall are silent on BLM. It's that their their specific team isn't talking about it with the frequency that they've arbitrarily decided they should. It seems like a pretty typical case of thinking that everybody should prioritize the exact political issues in the exact order and degree that you yourself do. You could make the exact same complaint for "people don't talk about DAPL as much as I'd like", or Nestlé and water rights, or climate change, or Syria etc etc. The only difference is that it's be ludicrous to consider any of the latter complaints as implicit discrimination, and yet for some reason you don't think it's ridiculous in this case.
It's very easy for people to be 'woke' about these issues and voice support for groups like BLM, but there's a difference between someone talking and someone showing an emotional response to someone that ought to impact them if they genuinely cared.
If you talk to tech folks about poverty every single one of them will give you a great essay like answer about the injustices of the world and how they support the working class, but the very same people will treat the cantine staff when nobody is looking with lack of respect that I've not seen in many other places. And that matters personally because that to me says more than speech.
And I would say that at least from my personal experience this is not just because people in tech earn a lot. Before I worked for a stereotypical tech company my first gig was in finance, and altough bankers tend to have a bad reputation, I've rarely seen someone mind taking a train through a rough neighbourhood, or mingling with people from say a working background.
In tech on the other hand I have to say I know a lot of people who are so insular in how they live their lives while at the same time touting all kinds of inclusivity that it's honestly pretty angering. It's not that I'm surprised that rich people don't think about poverty a lot, or that the OP is surprised that predominantly affluent white coders don't have a personal connection to african-americans getting shot, it's that if they're going to voice support it better be more than just lip service.
Note that this team was not engineers, a lot of the drama you see from Google comes from their non-tech teams so blaming it all on ignorant techies doesn't hold.
Am I the only one completely unsurprised? This sort of thing has been the ideology of the American professional-managerial class for decades: that diversity in the identities and freedom in the lifestyles of professionals themselves are profoundly important, worthy of celebration and extension into infinite new domains, but that those who simply don't reach the material station (ie: income, wealth, and accreditation) of professionals (ie: Googlers) deserve only contempt. "Political correctness" to defend the ingroup, but with an explicit celebration of doing material damage (ie: homelessness, gentrification, regional depopulation) to the outgroup.
It's a classic instantiation of the California Ideology[1]. The only bizarre or disagreeable bit is how it ever got passed off as somehow altruistic or progressive.
No. I noticed the same thing hearing the drum of intersectionality beaten so often.
Crenshaw's foundational piece[1] on intersectionality lacks any meaningful analysis of class (except for the class who is party to a lawsuit)! The part about entry into the country club is revealing: it's not about equality in society, it's about equality in the professional-managerial class.
Adolph Reed, Jr (despite maybe going too far in wholly rejecting identity politics) really gets the point across[2]:
>...the burden of that ideal of social justice is that the society would be fair if 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources so long as the dominant 1% were 13% black, 17% Latino, 50% female, 4% or whatever LGBTQ, etc.
Re:
>The only bizarre or disagreeable bit is how it ever got passed off as somehow altruistic or progressive.
My take is that the left holds similar liberal viewpoints, so there is just enough overlap to wear the progressive (and therefore altruistic) cloak.
I think it's unfair to make this association. It is both possible to be cognizant of gentrification and make valid critiques of political correctness.
It turns out that most people in the US decry PC[1]:
> 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness
There is a burgeoning movement on the left to be more lax about political correctness because the academic dialect (pedantry) required repels a lot of well-meaning people.
I see a lot of tech workers demonized for gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC, Chicago, Bay Area and Seattle, among other places. In my personal experience though, those people are buying the places they can afford as close to their work as possible. It's not that they're choose to displace people, it's that they're doing the best they can. They can't stay where they're from because there aren't actually good jobs for them there.
I think it's more about attitudes, like if you're cracking jokes about being a gentrifier as if it doesn't negatively affect other peoples' lives, then that's not good.
The other part is voting -- gentrifiers tend to vote for their own interests and may overlook or vote against efforts the people they're outclassing care about e.g affordable housing.
You have people who start political mailing lists on gender pronouns and technicalities that nobody on the street has ever thought about, but then that same person talks about homeless people in front of the office with a sort of callousness and elitism that is pretty breathtaking.
I can't agree with this more.
I sat through a discussion a few years ago that really opened my eyes... a group of younger artists - that normally discussed things like a lack of racial diversity in the company, transgender rights etc - passionately cheering on the owner of a trendy brunch spot who was on the news for tossing out parents with a crying infant. It struck me that their seemingly endless compassion for humanity might not actually be all that genuine after all.
I thought that being interested in social justice would at the very least require some basic human compassion and empathy, but perhaps that's where I was wrong.
Not sure if you are being downvoted but very much this. In my time at Google there has been very politically motivated engineering decisions (google scale code renaming to remove words like master-slave etc). While I totally agree that those should have been taken, but if a company is spending resources (which translates to money) to undertake projects that are inconsequential compared to other things (like being aware of the actual issues these communities face, as the memo points out) then it's fair to call out the company's blind spots.
Are the coworker he mentioned the people who start mailing list about gender issues? Maybe his coworker just doesn't want to start any domestic political discussion?
That is a very weird example for the article to lead with. He's talking about the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. What kind of "debate" can a primarily white and asian group of people have about those events? The whole fun of nerd debates is taking dueling positions on low-stakes issues--something that would be way out of line with respect to those issues.
>my teammates always had something to say about everything. But when it came to the violent policing of black bodies, they were silent
Debate is probably the wrong term, seems he was just looking for an acknowledgement of the problem. After one of those police shooting incidents I came into work and all of my coworkers, all white and asian, were talking about how bad the incident was. People at work come together and talk about major traumatic news stories all the time. A consistent absence of that when it relates to a specific topic might seem....strange.
Honestly, it sounds like even acknowledgement was not the problem. Their coworkers did speak up -- to criticize the protesters and claim they weren't accomplishing anything.
If I were in this person's position, silence would make me feel a little weird. My coworkers actively deriding the protest that I'm about to go join would make me feel a lot more weird.
I don't think people are lying when they say that tech employees have their own biases and blind spots, and it doesn't necessarily surprise me to learn that race is one of them.
I used to think that real estate prices/cost of living would drive companies to start looking to base operations outside of the bay area. I’m starting to think that a high maintenance workforce culture is going to beat prices to the punch.
> Silence on an issue is not a political statement.
At the very least, one should not make assumptions on someone's stance on a subject based on their silence. A lot of people lately seem quick to ascertain intent based on little or no context, and that's not a good way to deal with others.
> Silence on an issue is not a political statement.
Of course it is; it's merely an ambiguous one. It either means "I am happy with the status quo" or "I am too afraid to express opposition to the status quo."
It could also mean "I don't know enough about this topic to form an educated opinion so I'd rather not wade in". I'm not afraid to admit that I often find myself in this position when it comes to these contentious political issues. It doesn't mean I don't care and I'm usually happy to be educated.
Expecting everyone to comment on everything is how you get Twitter. People in general should be cautious about wading into contentious debates and more eager to just listen and hear what's what's being said.
Yes, this has a side effect of reducing the number of people who are actively challenging the status quo, and yes, there is an element of privilege in being able to say that. But artificially increasing the number of people in a debate can lead to fracturing and a lower quality of conversation. The negative side-effects outweigh the positives -- you risk drowning out the people that you're trying to support and adding misinformation that makes it easier to dismiss your side.
People also overestimate the amount of influence that places like Twitter have on policy. My strategy for a while now has been that when I see someone doing something hateful online, I try to avoid getting into an argument, and instead just donate $1-5 to a cause that opposes them. I think that's more helpful, and it comes with fewer negative side-effects. Obviously there's some privilege there as well; not everyone can afford to do that.
If that means I'm supporting structural racism... then :shrug:. I don't think telling people to be on 100% of the time is actually helping these movements in any appreciable way. We know from pretty much every other area that specialization and division of labor is more efficient and produces better results than having everyone try to do everything at once. It's not clear to me why social movements are different -- it seems completely obvious to me that specialization is necessary for progress.
Of course I'm willing to learn if there's a dimension to this I'm not seeing. My views on that have evolved in the past, and I expect they'll evolve in the future.
> Of course it is; it's merely an ambiguous one. It either means "I am happy with the status quo" or "I am too afraid to express opposition to the status quo."
No, silence often means “I’m not informed enough about this and don’t want to sound like a fool.” Heavens forbid people actually think before talking and not talk if they feel like they can’t say anything meaningful.
Even if we asked for more information, you are assuming, or mandating, that we process it in real time, which is really difficult for those of normal intelligence. Also, being told something is completely different from having the life experience as context. Eg I could guess what it’s like to be a Uighur living in Guangzhou, I could even ask some questions, but really I still wouldn’t know enough to talk meaningfully about it.
I would disagree with that. There are thousands of significant issues facing the US, and the world in general, you can't be vocal about them all. Just because I don't talk with people about what is happening in Hong Kong, or Yemen, or about gun control in the US, doesn't mean I think the status quo is OK. It just means there are other issues I am more focused on.
If I checked your comment history, would I see you fighting for fixing the outsized amount of suicides committed by men in the USA? If not, do you think it'd be reasonable to assume you're happy with the current state of affairs in that arena?
Or, they're passionate about change and doing what they can to push back against the status quo, but don't think that every battle needs to be fought in every arena. And in fact, doing so can be counterproductive.
You are indeed confused. I was simply replying to the very generic statement "silence on a matter means either "I am happy with the status quo" or "I am too afraid to express opposition to the status quo.""
This is simply not true. I never talk politics at work, simply because it's nobody's business. My silence is not motivated by fear, and I'm often not happy with the status quo. I just don't want to talk about these topics at work.
Right, but we're talking in the context of a specific action to be silent, in which the specific action of silence occurs when someone is willing to talk about any other seemingly sensitive matter.
I'm confused when we started to generalize to all silences. Sometimes I'm silent because I'm drinking water, or I'm asleep...
And debate isn’t what the author wants. How would the author feel about a debate about whether black people are statistically more likely or not to experience police brutality? People feel like they can debate what happened to MH17 or who Angelia Jolie will date. But for these issues there is only one sanctioned viewpoint. Forgive me for not standing in a circle while we all chant it.
- Police departments disproportionately killed black people, who were 41% of victims despite being only 20% of the population living in these cities.
- 41 of the 60 police departments disproportionately killed black people relative to the population of black people in their jurisdiction.
- 14 police departments killed black people exclusively in 2015, 100% of the people they killed were black. For only 5 police departments were 100% of those killed white.
Maybe that explains why they have more trouble with cops. It's easy to craft a simple narrative of good vs. evil when systematically ignore all the sins of one side.
Again, the statistics are about more the 'being black'. They are about neighborhood, economics, social norms. Resulting in altercations between mostly-white police and black citizens getting out of hand.
Its not right; I'm not arguing that. But until we understand the actual reasons behind the statistics, its just a shouting contest.
Thanks but it was just illustrative. I was not trying to start that debate. Only to highlight that the “conversations” that the author wants to see are largely just echoes of the same opinion, not an actual lively debate about who Sansa Stark will marry. I’d rather argue for an hour about whether Tom Brady or Joe Montana was better than sit in a drum circle and see who can say Black Lives Matter the loudest.
> "These protestors aren't going to solve anything ," she said. "Like, what are those people even trying to do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people off because they can't get to Grand Central? It's annoying . I just can't stand it."
> She rattled off a couple of other disparaging comments about the peaceful protestors I was preparing to join, repeatedly referring to them as those people before a chorus of my team’s nodding heads, each bobbing affirmingly behind their desk.
I agree that you shouldn't expect your co-workers to openly protest anything in particular, or anything at all. But I think it's just common sense to not shit on a bunch of people protesting police brutality committed on a black man... when one of your black co-workers is sitting a few feet away. At best it's insensitive.
> "These protestors aren't going to solve anything ," she said. "Like, what are those people even trying to do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people off because they can't get to Grand Central? It's annoying . I just can't stand it."
Yes. That's how protests work. You're trying piss people off enough to notice and take action. It doesn't matter what they're mad at so long as they're mad enough to take action. I don't care if they're pissed off that I'm wearing dark pants that they make the social change I'm after, so long as it gets made.
It's dangerous (and quite condescending) to assume that people are ignoring your plight out of ignorance or malice. Don't ask "why aren't they listening to me?" Ask instead "how am I making my point relatable and appealing to them?"
If you're pissing off the very people you're trying to win over to your side, then you have little reason to be surprised when they turn against you.
Truthfully you can either make them like you (by being relatable) or hate you (by annoying the crap out of them) -- just so long as you're not forgettable.
IMO we have an unlimited supply of problems we could focus our attention to, and as people, we don't have the capacity to address them all. We sort in order of pain, and protests cause pain, and pain causes action. It's less a question of morality and more of human physiology.
His co-workers were openly vocal about the impact of the Eric Garner-related protests (blocked traffic) but silent on the issue itself. I think that's worthy of criticism, even if it is human nature to avoid issues until they impact you directly.
If you have the ability to speak out for an oppressed class of people but do not you are de facto supporting the dominant regime. Silence is collaboration with the status quou. It's subtle but it IS racism. If you have the time to talk about social issued with your co workers, you have the ability and time to stand up for truth, justice, and freedom from oppression. If you don't get back to work. It's precisely the silence that is deafening.
>If you have the ability to speak out for an oppressed class of people but do not you are de facto supporting the dominant regime.
Shaming others into action isn't sustainable. At best, they'll join you begrudgingly but drag their feet doing so and not recruit the next set of allies on your behalf. At worst, you persuade them to join your opposition.
> If you have the ability to speak out for an oppressed class of people but do not you are de facto supporting the dominant regime.
Says you. What if I have an entirely third position on the issue that I'm afraid to speak out on?
> you have the ability and time to stand up for truth, justice, and freedom from oppression
I could do this, but what if my definition of what that is, is different than yours? What if I value, say, freedom of speech as the pinnacle value under the umbrella of "freedom from oppression", and you don't?
> It's precisely the silence that is deafening.
I usually wish there was more silence, to be honest. Maybe you should read the silence less as "unwillingness" and more as "people sitting aghast at what you've said, and wishing you'd just take it outside so we can go back to enjoying our breakfast".
I don't care what the issue is, but whenever someone makes this argument, it instantly makes me care that much less about whatever they are advocating. Everyone has a right to silence and non-involvement without having their motives questioned.
Can't this logic be spread to a bunch of other injustices in the world? If I interact with some party who is contributing some injustice to a group of people, whether in terms of work conditions, lack of political voice and so forth does that mean I'm collaborating/supporting their regime?
An example is the current situations happening in Hong Kong and Uyghur. And the fact that everything we buy on a day to day basis is "supporting" this oppression.
Where would we be today if people stayed silent about discrimination in the workplace and society at large (racial, gender, sexual orientation)? Silence is a privilege. Silence is what perpetuates power inequity.
Silence says to me: "My six figure paycheck is more important to me than having an opinion on something that is negatively impacting my colleague and their demographic."
Silence is something oppressed communities do not have the privilege of. Black people simply cannot be silent when they fear for their lives at every traffic stop. LGBTQ+ people cannot be silent when politicians are constantly trying to undermine their human rights in the name of religious freedom. Women cannot be silent when politicians do the same to their bodies, and the workplace constantly undermines their value.
One could easily argue that having the freedom to express an opinion on topics for which only one opinion is acceptable is much more privileged position to be in.
This feels like a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. Every day we get told that cis-het white guys should shut up and stop 'splaining oppression.
Judging people by nothing other than skin color is abhorrent reasoning, and an example of the racist and discriminatory perspective that you claim is causing oppression.
Credibility matters. If you have no credibility with your audience on the topic at hand, then your sound evidence will go unheard. It's not an issue of "should" it matter, but rather that it does matter. That's reality.
Well yeah, it's the audience who gets to determine how credible you are, by whatever (arbitrary and/or misguided) standards they choose.
As someone speaking to an audience, it's your responsibility to determine if it's worth your energy to engage with them. Sometimes it works out even in the most bizarre circumstances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
Who decides whether or not evidence is based and sound?
During the slave era, white slave owners believed they were doing good for the black man. That this was their optimal role in society.
If you are not the oppressed, you cannot objectively be part of the discussion about whether or not and how the oppressed are being oppressed. It's quite simple. The only thing you can do is help. If you argue against their oppression, you are perpetuating the structural inequality.
In a nutshell, everyone is oppressed, in some way.
You can be oppressed and be an oppressor. There's something to be said for how and why, but weighing them against each other is nebulous. This has been true throughout history. re: israel-palestinian, hmong-vienamese, english-scottish, etc.
> If you are not the oppressed, you cannot objectively be part of the discussion about _whether or not_ ...
I don't find this assertion is sound. There's an element of ideology in there, which I appreciate, but I do not agree on this practical tenet. If it was rephrased or attenuated to a more specific decisioning system (ie the latter part of the statement, is more palatable, albeit also something I don't fully agree to), I would re-examine it.
So, just because some men had a crappy idea — at the same time people also thought the earth was made in a week — every white man who ever lives is now precluded from an opinion. Dear lord.
It is better not to engage people who think like that. They’re don’t have a good faith interest in improving the situation, they only want to talk down to people.
I'll give you a couple very extreme examples that you can hopefully find parallel in:
Do slave owners get a seat at the table when discussing whether or not and how slaves are oppressed?
Do white people who support Jim Crow laws get a seat at the table when discussing whether or not and how black people are oppressed?
Does a religious majority get a seat at the table when discussing whether or not and how a religious minority is oppressed?
The argument is: those that are not affected by the oppression discussed (who may even be doing the oppressing) simply cannot have an objective discussion on whether or not and how a community is being oppressed. How do you know what that oppression is and feels like to tell someone that they are not being oppressed? Therefore, where a white cis-het male's opinion is productive is only when discussing how they can help-- not when discussing whether or not that oppression exists.
In the same vein, I am male. My opinion is not productive when discussing whether or not and how women are oppressed. Consider this scenario: male politicians are deciding on laws that govern women's bodies; women say they are oppressed; men say no you're not oppressed. Do you see why men's opinion are not productive here? My opinion only matters when discussing how I can help women feel less oppressed.
At the end of the day, you have the freedom and right to discuss all you want. But ask yourself, is your discussion productive or destructive to someone else. Your arguments will never convince an oppressed community that they are not oppressed, that's gaslighting. It will only convince other unaffected people against them-- which is why it's destructive to discuss the existence of oppression when you are not the oppressed.
So the alt-right gets a seat at the table when discussing whether or not the mainstream media oppresses them? But the media must sit in silence?
So the Russians get a seat at the table when discussing if Russian-born Ukrainians are being oppressed? But the ethnic Ukrainians have no say.
So gun rights activists get a seat at the table when we discuss if their 2nd amendment rights are being oppressed? But the gun-owning majority gets no say?
Do members of the Church of Scientology sit alone at an empty table when discussing how they are oppressed? Members of major religions who have members routinely massacred have no say?
How about white supremacists? They’re a small minority. I’m sure they’d claim to be oppressed.
How about men being unfairly oppressed by “me too”? No place at the table for women!
Hopefully you can see how ridiculous your position is. You’re choosing cherry-picked situations where the answer is something you agree with. You’re also assuming that no group of people would ever deem themselves to be oppressed when they are in fact not - but that’s clearly not the case! You’re also forgetting that it’s entirely possible for a minority to oppress a majority - just look at Syria.
ultimately the existence and degree of oppression is a factual matter. in general I agree that white dudes tend to have very little information that they can add to such a discussion. the way society is set up mostly precludes learning anything about it firsthand.
at the same time, I think your position is too absolute. to give you an example, I used to work in a small pizza place. one day a black dude came in and ordered eight slices of pizza. my coworker informed him that he was significantly overpaying and could save money by ordering a whole 16" pizza instead. the guy instantly flew off the handle: "you think I don't understand math?", "would you ask a white person that question?", "I didn't go to school for two years to be talked down to by the likes of you", etc. my coworker (a white dude) explained that, in fact, he asked everyone who ordered eight slices that question as it was store policy (it was) and that it had nothing to do with race.
as far as I understand it, racism was not happening in that situation. was it wrong of my coworker to point that out, or should he just have accepted that he didn't deserve a "seat at the table"? or am I wrong, and my coworker was being racist while treating this man exactly the same as all the other customers?
The answer is that it's not all about 'coworker', but understanding that the way society has treated black people and minorities has create a hostile environment. The reason why people don't want white men at the table is because they tend to make it personal and about themselves. There's a great episode of south park, the 'n word' episode [0], that kind of explains this. Stan exuberantly "gets it", by "not getting it".
like I said, I think I understand at a high level what people mean when they say white men shouldn't have or don't deserve a seat at the table. I certainly wouldn't presume to have a useful opinion on stuff like "how bad is racism today?". I also understand that the guy in the restaurant probably didn't just lose it because of that one isolated occurrence, and that his lived experience might very well justify the outburst.
what I'm trying to understand is what exactly "the table" is and what it means for a person to respect that they don't get a seat at it. should my coworker have just stood there and not defended himself? or should he have gone so far as to apologise for something he didn't understand or think he did? was making any attempt to defend himself or correct the perceived misunderstanding presuming to have a seat at "the table"? am I recentering the discussion around white men just by asking how he should have handled it?
I'll have a look at the video later, can't watch at work.
You're still kinda missing the point. It doesn't matter what your coworker did or didn't do. It's not about them. You bringing up that point again kinda proves that you shouldn't have a seat at "the table". What do we mean by "the table"? Usually it's an active voice in discussions on these things. Do everyone a favor and start listening to people. Really listen. Become empathetic. Don't try to fix things, because you don't understand the problem. Start understanding that you don't understand the problem.
It sure must suck to get yelled at by someone, especially when it's confusing or doesn't make sense. Want to know what's worse than getting yelled at? Getting shot by the authorities.
tbh I'm starting to get the impression that you are deliberately sidestepping my question, but maybe I just haven't done a good job with phrasing it. all I'm really asking is whether the coworker in the story is taking a seat at "the table" by making any attempt to explain whatsoever.
your coworker is having a human interaction with another human. That's life. Sometimes people are upset. Sometimes they're upset about stuff that doesn't make sense. Sometimes you can calm them down by talking with them and sometimes you can't. The table doesn't happen in day to day interactions. The table exists to try and solve the issues that cause these day to day interactions to exist.
... yes? You can't argue you're being objective about your expectations of people who didn't voluntarily choose to live in your house or follow your rules but don't have means to do otherwise.
I mean, your example is literally spot on. You as a parent can't be objective - you have to oppress your children to get them to adhere to your ideals of the household.
Sorry, wasn't commenting on the merits of parenting, authoritative styles, etc. Just trying to match OP's children's definition of "oppression" ..
* having expectations involuntarily set on your performing of activities that you would not voluntarily perform otherwise;
* punishment for failing to meet those expectations, rather than a reward for meeting those expectations
With the contradictory idea of the person setting the expectations and punishments being "objective" in a discussion.
Certainly if the request from the children is "we don't want to clean our rooms", the only truly objective response is to either:
a) incentivize them to clean their rooms with negotiated rewards and benefits, in a true market sense
b) convince them through logic and rhetoric to voluntarily choose to clean their rooms;
c) agree that they don't have to clean their rooms.
Well, yes, you're excluded from discussing that oppression if you exclude matriarchy/patriarchy from parenting. As a society, we deem matriarchy/patriarchy in parenting as part of raising children.
The entire idea of patriarchy in civil rights is that white cis-het men believe they know what's best for everyone in society-- and this power is given to them by society through politics. That's precisely what these "social justice" movements are trying change, the power structure, and increase representation in politics and society at large. Would you argue that is it right for white cis-het men to "parent" other communities in the same way you parent your children?
What if they disagree with your premises? I'd rather be your enemy than ally if all I can do is nod my head like an idiot puppet at all of the terribly misinformed social justice rhetoric you're throwing at me.
But at least ask yourself why you disagree and why you think someone is wrong about their oppression. And then apply that lens of thinking to another era, say Jim Crow, and how your lens of thinking can affect others.
>I never told my team the truth of where I was going that night. And though I spent my night shouting
protest chants, straining my voice until Garner’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” cracked against the throat,
I returned to work the next day in silence. And after struggling to cope with the fear that my team might
not accept me — the activist me and the black me — silence became my strategy for survival.
So, crudely put, the author expected Google and his teammates to read his mind? And now he is punishing people's apparent lack of mind-reading skills by leaving Google.
This is of course an incredibly crass way of putting it, but while I feel like the author is touching upon a real issue I think he handled it quite poorly as well.
> This is of course an incredibly crass way of putting it...
Aside: Perhaps then spend the extra time to find a better way to put it then? HN is an open board like many others, but one of the many reasons people come here is for the good community and commentary that is somewhat rare online. First to comment is not (generally) that big of a deal here, we all can wait for a measured response.
However I fail to understand two of the three points made:
1) Ok, fine
2) I cannot visualize how VR can help in "diversity training"
3) I am failing to see how/why Google should be involved in the issue, I mean, what about the mental health of all the other people (part of "overrepresented" and "fairlyrepresented" besides "underrepresented" groups) working for google and all the ones not working for Google?
They are all exposed to the same news.
And is it actually the news causing this influence on mental health (as opposed to the way the news are reported or - sadly - to the terrible things that happen in the world)?
> 2) I cannot visualize how VR can help in "diversity training"
Empathy. Most people are selfish and it can be difficult for us to care about an issue that hasn't impacted us directly. VR could give people the opportunity to experience what it's like to be someone totally different and "walk a mile in their shoes."
Yes about "walk a mile in their shoes" but I thought that the VR technology allows to see/experience something "different", i.e. project yourself, as you are, in an environment to which you wouldn't otherwise have access, but it doesn't change "you" (which should be actually the objective).
Let's take as a counter example a hypothetical (very realistic and VR as much as you want) shoot-em-all game, you may well play it at length and become (inside the game) the toughest soldier/killer in the world, but it is not like (mostly) you then go out and start shooting everyone.
But even if there wasn't this (hopefully) separation between "real" reality and the "virtual" one, I have difficulties in visualizing a "story board" of a virtual experience that could actually increase empathy towards a minority if you don't already have it, and that can do it more effectively than traditional education/culture (lessons, meetings, books, movies, etc.)
> I thought that the VR technology allows to see/experience something "different", i.e. project yourself, as you are, in an environment to which you wouldn't otherwise have access, but it doesn't change "you"
Yes, I think that's exactly why VR would help with diversity training. A lot of implicit bias comes from superficial differences in a person's outward physical appearance. Age, skin color, gender, even height and weight. VR could allow "you" (same skills, same knowledge, same capabilities) to experience the frustration of knowing that you're more than capable yet held back by something as silly as your avatars "skin."
> But even if there wasn't this (hopefully) separation between "real" reality and the "virtual" one, I have difficulties in visualizing a "story board" of a virtual experience that could actually increase empathy towards a minority if you don't already have it
I can. A VR room escape game would be a good opportunity. You would be assigned to complete ten room escape "levels" of approximately equal difficulty with a team of four other participants. It would be a new team for each level so at the end of the training you'd have worked on ten different "rooms" with 40 different people. At the beginning of the session you would be assigned one of a handful of generic avatars - whichever one most closely resembles your gender & skin color. You'd play as this avatar and your teammates will see and interact with your avatar.
At the end of each task you would quickly rate the group as a whole, rate your own performance within that group, and individually rate each of the other people on your team. I'm imagining five minutes to quickly respond to scale of 1-5 type metrics along the lines of technical skill, interpersonal skill, leadership skill, etc. as well as another few minutes to journal personal reflections - Did you enjoy working with that group? Did you feel like your team listened to your ideas? Valued your input? Do you feel accomplished? Frustrated?
But, unbeknownst to you, your teammates will only see "your" avatar for half of the tasks. For the other half, they'll be shown a slightly different avatar. For example, if you're a white woman your avatar might appear as a black woman for five of the tasks.
And you won't actually work with 40 different people, you'll work with the same four.
At the end of the session you'd see how your teammates rated your abilities for each level and how the ratings differed based on which of the two avatars they were shown. You'd also see how your ratings of your teammates differed based on the avatar you saw.
We all like to think we're immune to bias. We're not racist or sexist. We don't discriminate. And we all like to think people will judge us on our abilities. That it doesn't matter what we look like because we're smart and capable and of course people will be able to recognize that. But I think it would be eye-opening for people to experience the impact of unconscious bias from both sides at once. Because whether we're willing to admit it or not, none of us are immune. But the more aware we are of our bias blindspots - and the consequences of those blindspots - the better equipped we'll be to recognize them (in our own actions and the actions of others) and react to them accordingly.
I understand, thanks, and it seems to me like a nice approach, still I am not convinced that it will be intrinsecally superior to more traditional education.
How do you feel right now? Frustrated? Annoyed? Do you think I'm a complete and total idiot?
I don't blame you. I also know exactly how you feel and where you're coming from. When I first wrote the comment you're replying to I initially had a few sentences at the end about how I wish more people on HN would create usernames that clearly belong to women so they could compare and contrast how they're treated and experience the frustration of what I call the "casual dismissal."
There are a lot of things I love about tech and about HN but one of the things that really drives me nuts is how often women's ideas and opinions are quickly brushed off as unconvincing or not fully-formed without any effort to articulate why. It's frustrating to contribute to a thoughtful conversation only to be told your contribution is without merit by a person who can't even be bothered to explain any further than a shallow and meaningless "I'm not convinced."
And it happens constantly. I've seen it happen to others and I've experienced it first hand. And it is so beyond frustrating to participate in a discussion only to have the other person respond with "that's nice, but I'm not convinced."
As you can see, you are not immune. But perhaps if you spent a little time on HN as a woman you'd have a better understanding of what I'm talking about.
>How do you feel right now? Frustrated? Annoyed? Do you think I'm a complete and total idiot?
Absolutely not.
You were so kind as to share your view on the matter and I thanked you for your well-thought out and detailed reply/proposal.
And I had no intention to dismiss it in any way, if you felt like that I beg your pardon.
That's it, before your post I couldn't even imagine a VR based kind of experience, now you provided a good example, which doesn't mean that - as said - it will be intrinsically better than more traditional non-VR methods, in my opinion.
I already tried to explain the reasons why, a simulation is a simulation and most people are aware of that, thus I cannot believe that an experience like the one you described can actually "stick" in the minds of the participants, I think that most of them will simply take it for a "game about an escape room", unless they have a previous sensitivity to the racial or gender (or whatever other) biases.
Google is only 2.5% black according to a quick search (and 3.5% Latino). That's all employees, not just developers. I'm not sure how that's even possible for a company of that size in America. AA may be underrepresented in tech overall but they certainly aren't in business, HR, legal, etc in my corporate experience so that number seems very low to me. I wonder if any analysis has been to done to determine if any biases or recruitment strageties resulted in those low numbers.
To Google's credit they are developing various pipelines to recruit underrepresented communities.
I'm guessing it's because Latinos and blacks in general are underrepresented in the white collar labor pools that Google draws from. Most Google employees, if not developers, are still in white collar office-type professions.
According to that study, black people make up 2-3% of the white collar workforce. This indicates that Google's diversity initiatives are broadly working, but Google alone cannot overcome the societal issues that keep various people out of these well paying career paths.
Hispanics represent about 5% of the white collar workforce, so again, the 3.5% indicates that Google is not exactly where one would expect, but still not as off as a naive analysis would seem.
The narrative that Google is not hiring people of certain skin colors because of racism on their part falls apart the moment you look at numbers over which Google has little control.
They show hiring and attrition numbers, but they don't break down every category by tech/non-tech.
I'll highlight these:
2018 (Tech): 2.5% (1.4%) black
2014 (Tech): 1.9% (1.1%) black
I guess there is some improvement here. For reference, California is ~6% black and the USA is ~12%. If you grew up in a black neighborhood or went to an HBCU, you are probably accustomed to much higher percentages than the average and being diffused into a huge organization might be jarring.
> AA may be underrepresented in tech overall but they certainly aren't in business, HR, legal,
Other than on admin support roles (and maybe even there), African-Americans are underrepresented in all of those fields. Less so than in tech, but still.
I am lost at how we as a society are so quick to attack someone who has a difference in opinion. Just because someone doesn't agree with your solution, it doesn't mean they are opposed to resolving the problem.
The OP, in my opinion, does have a lot of internal anger they need to resolve. e.g., how he expresses clenching his fist and not feeding into the rage.
After reading the memo, it's my personal opinion the OP has a lot of unresolved issues and should consider speaking to a therapist. I feel like they are projecting their hate those nearby him. That's unhealthy and also very counterproductive.
I genuinely worry that socially, people are overly sensitive, and it's hurting social progress. Instead of people learning to communicate with one another, they label the "opposition". Instead of understanding someone's perspective, they project onto them what they want to "fight against."
Now is this a direct result of social behaviors bleeding into "real-world" interactions?
I don't blame Google at all. I blame the behavior of the OP and his lack of effort to communicate with his peers in a mature, healthy, and positive way. It just feels like he doesn't care to understand the position of those around him. Instead, he wants everyone just to accept his perspective.
All this being said, it's time for people to cut back on social media. I had to do that because it's too easy to get sucked into arguments with angry people. It's also easy and honestly fun to insult and trigger pointless arguments to entertain yourself. Regardless, it's unhealthy.
The root cause is the slow death of individualism and rise of group identity.
I read the whole memo and couldn't see how race was relevant in any of this (apart perhaps for the short "but as my time at Google continued" paragraph towards the end). Had Eric Garner been of a different skin color, the coworker likely would have made similar remarks regarding the protests annoying her. People tend to be less concerned with issues that don't affect them directly and my guess is that few Google employees have ever directly witnessed or experienced police brutality.
If anyone in this story is racist, I'd argue it's the author of the memo. He identifies with Eric Garner simply because they look physically similar. He distrusts and lies to his colleagues because they don't share his skin color. He is concerned for his "black students" rather than his "students".
I truly believe we would all be better off if individualism and color blindness made a come back.
> I don't blame Google at all. I blame the behavior of the OP and his lack of effort to communicate with his peers in a mature, healthy, and positive way.
What's mature, healthy, and positive? Maybe it's society that is the failure? Maybe the unending docility of modern life is creating emotional volcanoes. Maybe some people like hostility, and maybe some people like confrontation. Not everyone and everything needs to be 'nice'; this is an ideal that needs to die.
> That implies you have no self-control and require the government to tell you how to think/behave.
I don't see how that implies a lack of self control, and I'm not sure what the government has to do with it.
> Who said people need to be nice? I recall me saying:
I guess I read 'positive' as 'be nice.' What's a positive way to deal with a world that you hate (hypothetically)? Why should anyone do anything positive, why can't they lash out as they see fit? Why should someone live by rules that others created without their consent, and then be 'positive' about it?
Maybe society has failed. Maybe we're not living how we're supposed to be living.
There is definitely a problem with policing in the United States that needs to be fixed and there are a ton of cases that illustrate why. But for the life of me I can't understand why Michael Brown is championed as one of them. I don't want to be crass but Michael Brown was a bully that got caught up in his own anger and paid for it. Out of all the examples to choose from why would they choose him.
There’s a theory that mainstream media outlets deliberately (or algorithmically) select and highlight news stories that are maximally divisive. The Eric Garner story got much less press than the Michael Brown case did, because the Garner one was quite clearly a case of police abuse. Only the most fringe elements would claim the police acted fairly in that situation. Meanwhile, Michael Brown’s death was (at least at first) in a much more fuzzy area. So, more controversy, more clicks and comments.
> “I realized that my team simply did not have much to say on the issue of police brutality. This was odd—mostly because I’d watched them debate countless other topics, newsworthy and not, with a proud deftness and alacrity,”
I'm not surprised countless of other topics are far safer conversation topics. They are here to do a job and not get involved with politics and touching incendiary topics would be downright stupid. They certainly have an opinion in some way. But they're not stupid enough to share it.
Why on earth would you ever expect your coworkers to talk about gun rights, abortion, police brutality etc over Malaysia 370 in an office environment?
I think this article missed the mark by leaving out all context.
They don't mention the black employees role. Some roles at Google are relatively more diverse. It would be interesting to hear if his peers were diverse but not opinionated, or perhaps they were opinionated but not as much as he was. Or if his peer were not diverse and not opinionated, etc.
The article mentions a team but doesn't clarify if he was on a team or if it was a team of subordinates. If my boss was black and the topic of police brutality came up, I'd avoid saying anything as well.
Lastly, "And though I eventually grew more comfortable using challenging moments to educate my co-workers..." comes across poorly. Depending on how I felt a coworker was consistently trying to "educate" me regarding social issues, I could see myself purposefully avoiding those topics around them and not engaging.
My takeaway isn't that Google is awful. It seems Google is just like every other place, full of intolerant biased people. Which is a sadder conclusion really.
I think there’s an expectation that the community at google would be more open.
It’s kind of like how that one Alexander Scott article, people of like minds tend to coalesce, leading to things like almost nobody on reddit being anti-abortion despite it being one of the most popular websites in the US.
I’m sure a lot of us work in places where basically everyone is uncomfortable with police brutality. The fact that the Google team wasn’t (along with other points in the article) could lead to the hypothesis that Google in fact has a bit of a more conservative culture
Collective ego is super fascinating when you're used to stepping back and seeing how pervasive it is in our lives. That requires the mental tools and a habit of picking it out though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDj6LBW55aU
I realized that my team simply did not have much to say on the issue of police brutality. This was odd—mostly because I’d watched them debate countless other topics, newsworthy and not, with a proud deftness and alacrity,”
This is a nonsensical complaint. There are probably 10 topics that I am interested in, that are important to me, that nobody I know would be interested in discussing at length with me. I understand that police brutality may be an important issue to him, but coworkers not being interested in discussing it at length at work doesn’t seem like an indicator of racism or bad company culture to me.
I wonder how much the current college environment has to do with graduates ascribing things that seemingly have no connection with various “isms” to them.
This isn't about Google, I'm not even sure it's about race or class.
This is just how people are. Put enough of them in a place and let them get comfortable with each other and you will hear this.
That has been my experience in the industry for 17 years now. 8 years at a very large company with plenty of employees.
Stressed and bitter employees tend to talk this way. Others don't. Some might not feel comfortable talking about it, some might talk about it with their other friends.
But in general I've noticed that people who are comfortable and being themselves can vent racist and "class-related" opinons freely around the office. In teams of 6-8 people there might be one or two of the types of people who tend to take charge in these discussions. Or initiate them.
I have increasingly noticed people categorize competing political or social opinions as racist or disparaging. Many of my co-workers label support for enforcing existing border controls as racist, opposition to affirmative action or racial reparations as white supremacist. This memo seems to do the same:
> “These protestors aren’t going to solve anything, ” she said. ”Like, what are those people even trying to
do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people
off because they can’t get to Grand Central? It’s annoying . I just can’t stand it.” She rattled off a couple of other disparaging comments about the peaceful protestors I was preparing to join, repeatedly referring to them as those people before a chorus of my team’s nodding heads, each bobbing affirmingly behind their desks. With each nod, my co-workers validated my irate teammate’s frustration — and her disgust. How could the team I’d grown to trust and respect care so little about an innocent man who’d lost his life?
The fact that one's co-worker does not approve of protestor and thinks their tactics are ineffective or counterproductive is not disparagement. Diversity means there is going to be a diversity of viewpoints and opinions on controversial topics. Lack of diversity is not the root of this employee's distress. Quite the opposite, the fact that the author encountered people with different viewpoints is the cause of this. The author later states that, "Over the last 5 years, I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different
languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of 'fit,' and so much more." But in the absence of sharing the details of those events, we're left to wonder whether this "hateful words" about immigrants and "boasting unabashedly about gentrification" amount to genuine harassment or differences of opinion that the author finds intolerable.
I think it's great that the industry is making efforts to become more diverse. But that comes with creating an environment in which people are going to come into contact with co-workers with very different views on controversial topics. It seems to me that the solution isn't more diversity (although more diversity is welcome in its own right), it's either curtailing discussions of these topics in the office or establishing a set of approved viewpoints and forbidding espousing or sharing views outside this set. The last solution is to cultivate an environment where people respect each other regardless of differences and do not treat encountering an opinion they find harmful or bad as a personal attack - but this last solution seems increasingly difficult to achieve.
> Over the last 5 years, I've heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of "fit," and so much more.
Not to detract from this particular situation, but I've been thinking "fit" is also part of a more general cultural problem.
At my first real industry job (software engineering of commercial technical workstation software), shortly before dotcom gold rush, half my team was female, the engineers were mostly 30s through 40+, and everyone was skilled, but with no strutting.
I know not all places were like that, but "tech" hiring the last decade or two has really seemed to operate more like a stereotypical frathouse, complete with pledging and hazing (and sometimes even in-office frat-like parties, at at least one prominent company, as a friend described it).
I suspect we've gotten very bad about "fit", using it to dress up old exclusionary biases, and that a lot of people get an impression of our field being like that, and are turned off.
>In the memo, the former employee cites a few moments where he felt uncomfortable at Google, particularly after big news events such as the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and during the ensuing protests against police brutality.
The Vice article, from what I saw, doesn't clarify if the writer themself felt threatened by his coworkers, or if he/she just felt comfortable talking about police brutality against people of color. Obviously, if the writer was experiencing some hostility at work that would be one thing – and surely would be a serious problem worth discussing. But I'm not a person of color, and I'm very uncomfortable talking about police brutality at work. The topic is very sensitive and I don't think it's appropriate to distract my coworkers from their jobs by stressing them out. I work with some people that simply couldn't finish their day if I started a discussion about police brutality, or the murder of innocent people of color, or about X-phobic issues. Work is somewhat of a social place, but it's not really acceptable anywhere to just openly discuss politics, gender, identity, violence, etc. in my opinion. I don't even like talking about my music and movie tastes at work! Work is also, for me, a place where I can come in and be good at what I do, separate myself from the outside world, and have a little fun here and there (and get paid). My office isn't really a place for activism, to me. Does that make me a racist? Or classist? Or sexist?
About the only important things I'm willing to discuss that isn't work related are my garden, my family, and where we want to eat lunch. Otherwise... it's headphones on.
This is what Googlers refer to as "my pony is overcooked" syndrome. It's when the person detaches from outside reality so completely, they think Google is somehow "bad" on any of these hot button issues. It's not. I worked there for almost a decade, and I have not seen _any_ real racism, misogyny or discrimination. You will retort that it's sample size of 1, to which I will say that if the issues the authors of these memos describe were as pervasive as they claim, I'd notice _something_ at least.
That having been said, I'm not black myself, and during my time at Google only very few people around me happened to be black. I _could_ be they're experiencing issues that are so unique to them I can't even grasp the extent of their "burden". But knowing Google, I find it really, really hard to believe.
I'd even go as far to say that if you're looking for a company that takes gender/race discrimination seriously, for real, you'd have a hard time finding a better company to join.
Wrong title. Should be "The Burden of Working in an Unprofessional Environment with Jerks."
This is a natural outcome of promoting work, not as a job, but more of a lifestyle to ring out as much as productivity as you can from young, unattached people. There isn't a boundary between work/personal life like there is everywhere else. I've seen different attempts at this on both the west and east coasts. Forced communal lunches, free food, comfy couches to sleep on "if you need to," game rooms, required outings, "bring you whole self to work," etc.
Working in these environments is draining, because some people seem to take pride in saying the most inappropriate and cringe-worthy things, and they go unchallenged. When you work in that context where no one is expected to be professional, it will cause problems; however, when you make the mistake of believing your job is more than a job, you will end up angry and vengeful.
For some reason, this seems to be much more the norm on the north-east and west coasts.
I'm surprised that "anti-immigrant sentiment" was a problem they observed at Google. While I was at Google the sentiment was very, very pro-immigrant. The company has a huge number of immigrant employees, after all, and Mountain View is a very pro-immigrant area already.
> But when it came to the violent policing of black bodies, they were silent.
Because it's way too risky to have an opinion on that topic unless it precisely tows the woke party line. It's a minefield. You'd have to be stupid to touch that topic in the workplace in 2019.
It's strange why are you downvoted because it's exactly this. Nobody wants to risk being misunderstood and the get fired because he phrased his opinion wrongly.
The burden this man suffers is self placed. Unless words are spewed in his direction specifically or he is the target of some injustice personally, he could simply ignore everything and just go on living his life happily and at peace. I recommend it.
There are more and more these strange cases when people for some reason think that if everybody around are not cheering them and don't have exectly the same personal opinions as to life, politics, or religion they are opressed in one or another way. While in reality they just participate in a discussion where people have different points of view. That reminds very much a victim mentality and inability to cope with own emotions to have reasonable arguments. People atribute regular behaviour of others that do not align with their own to agression and suprisingly to some sort of discrimination.
Any truly result-driven company's premptive measure for dealing with these sorts of annoyances (for all employe*s), should be the solution of deeming non-work-related discussion involving politics, religion, race and such divisive topics as "unsuitable for the workplace". Discussion serious-enough to spur opinionated ramblings and ideological smartassness, to say the least, that's not work-related and that's conducted during working hours, must be ideally stated in all employee contracts as a clear set of terms a prospective candidate must comply with avoiding.
Working at Google in 2019 is no fun. Political correctness seems to have destroyed the whimsy that the company used to embody. Nowadays it's just about stifling dictatorialism and thought policing.
> As I went to pack my bag, I noticed that my co-workers had stopped working long enough to stare at the television screen, which showed thousands of protestors filling the New York City streets just blocks from where we sat. Suddenly, one of my teammates spoke up: "Ugh. This is getting a bit ridiculous," she said. "I'm sorry. Does anyone else think this is ridiculous?"
Valid question. And not everyone thinks the same way. And people should not under any circumstances have to walk on eggshells because someone might be offended. Where is the line drawn? By the person who is offended? We should just all not open our mouths.
> My hands stopped zipping up my backpack, and I turned my head far enough to see her in my periphery -- sitting behind me with her head shaking and arms folded in exasperation.
So what? So what??? (Not to mention that there could be many explanations for 'exasperation or even if it really was 'exasperation'.
> "These protestors aren't going to solve anything," she said. "Like, what are those people even trying to do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people off because they can't get to Grand Central? It's annoying. I just can't stand it."
Perfectly fine to say and I would have said that. To bad most people are not willing to admit that they either think similar things and/or don't think that is bad to say under any circumstances.
Bottom line: Stop trying to make everyone stop voicing their opinion with your thought police about what is acceptable.
I'm surprised at how long it seems to have lasted, this idea that your workplace is a giant encounter group. Is there evidence that this is a good idea or bad idea? Is there evidence that leaving your sports interests, movie interests, politics, and family problems at home is good or bad?
First, Google (along with almost all big tech) needs more people of color. I'm sorry this guy left.
Second: Michael Brown was not murdered. He was a bully who used his size to intimidate people and the evidence shows he had his arm inside the cop car. Everybody of every color should re-think that scenario and come down on the right side of it. Facts are facts.
Third: I'm really sorry that guy moved on. Kelsey Hightower is a beacon of hope in the tech community, we need more examples to encourage future generations. I hope this guy lands somewhere good and finds success.
"I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of ‘fit.’"
A company the heralds its Progressive values in one of the most Progressive areas of the country. Yes, this is exactly what you should expect to happen.
Does google insurance not provide for mental health care? I know it’s not standard for many corporations but I’d imagine google’s healthcare is very competitive. If so... idk what this person wants.
Really frustrating to see this flagged: either we don't trust the moderators to moderate or someone simply doesn't want to have this discussion. We're all (mostly) technologists here, diversity in tech and the issues surrounding it are not going to go away, as this post shows -- people ain't gonna talk about this in the office, the least HN can do is provide a forum for tech workers to discuss the issue with guardrails on decorum.
Also it's largely pointless. Unlike technology arguments, where you can easily convince me to try switching from Sublime to VSCode or to give Rust a try instead of C++, etc. political beliefs are much more entrenched. Each side has a very hard time understanding and empathizing with the viewpoint of the other side.
Exactly, it's a lot like religion, except that at least with politics you can at least attempt to bring facts and data into the discussion in an attempt to disprove the other side's points. But people still treat it like a religion so it generally just isn't productive to discuss it, unless you're among people who are generally like-minded, and you're only hashing out finer points (e.g., would policy A or policy B be more fruitful for reducing global warming? Rather than arguing over whether global warming is real or not).
As was called out explicitly in Anna Wiener's article on HackerNews earlier this month, HNers have some distance to go in ability to discuss these topics.
Damore provided copious evidence that Google was hostile to his demographic, those sexual assault protests showed that it was hostile to women, this shows that it's hostile to minorities... It sounds like Google is a battlefield where everybody is getting shot by everyone else. At least it's not divided into perpetrators and victims along identity lines.
No demographic is known to be "hostile dicks" to another demographic. There are individuals of every demographic that cover the "dick spectrum" on any particular issue. Issuing blanket statements about everyone of a particular demographic is racist/sexist/ageist....
> When your demographic is known to be hostile dicks
Pause on what you just wrote. Substituting "your demographic" with an explicit call out of a race or gender would be openly racist/sexist, would it not?
Ironically this article is still referring to Damore’s memo as an “anti-diversity memo”. What an overt falsehood. There are lots of valid criticisms of his memo, but this isn’t one of them.
Apropos of nothing, I actually find myself using DuckDuckGo and Firefox a lot more lately, over Chrome and gSearch. I also want to get to hosting my own email, and move off of Gmail. Not going to lie though, I really like the Gmail interface and would appreciate any good replacements.
I use Fastmail and while it's very different and not as "modern" as the Gmail interface, I did end up getting used to it and enjoy the straightforward control it offers.
I've also switched to DDG as my main search engine but often find myself using `!g` as the results are quite as good in many cases. Still, it feels great to be escaping Google's stranglehold.
Just remember to avoid fastmail (due to the terrible Australian tech laws - essentially anyone can be coerced into installing backdoors / surveillance tech into any system and they're required to maintain secrecy). So add the avoidance of any Australian service to your matrix of considerations.
It's very noble to switch away from google as much as possible; good luck
Wait, do you mean every piece of software coming from Australia? Andrew Tridgell is Australian. Would it therefore include Samba and Rsync? Does that mean Sublime Text could have a mandatory backdoor? Is there a list of software affected by this Australian law?
It doesn't belong on HN. It's not tech-related and explicitly is against the rules. I know election season is coming and more of these types of threads will be made but they belong on reddit, 4chan, and others, not here.
1. hn is not strictly for tech or tech-related topics (which I'd argue this falls under if that were a rule). The rules page mentions "tech" zero times.
2. did the rules change after the Damore memo to explicitly forbid this? The drama surrounding him certainly stuck on the front page for a while.
perhaps the rules need a review imo because this directly reflects our industry. passing this conversation to another platform is the easiest thing to do. When do we start having brave conversations?
Which is why companies should start treating politics in the workplace as a liability. You can't have a workplace where someone "brings their whole self to work" at scale.
I can't imagine why on Earth anyone would want to bring such a personal topic into the workplace. As a matter of fact, it kind of disturbs the integrity of a professional environment to have these kinds of discussions during working hours anyway.
For the record, I have never felt discriminated against or left-out, or anything other than being another member of my team in a meaningful way.
I think focusing on these kinds of sensitivities can pull a sense of mistrust and underhandedness to the team. I'm not going to invalidate his feelings on the issue, because we are all allowed to feel how we feel; but I would caution anyone in engaging those feelings at work for the benefit of all parties involved.