AliceFraser
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AMA - That Google Diversity Screed
🕑 Added 2017-08-08 05:42:16 +0000 UTC I always say on the podcast, let me know if there's anything you'd like me to cover, so here's one of those."Some public arguments perfectly encapsulate the fault line between two different mindsets. I think this is one of them.
Interested to hear what you think about it:
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-circulating-internally-at-google/"
I think he probably shouldn't have been fired? Except perhaps for using work to disperse a pretty hack political screed, outside his remit, which shows a severe lack of judgment. I don't know how normal such distributions of personal opinion and suggestion are, in Google, so I'm not sure if it was contextual out of the blue.
If it's an environment where they explicitly encourage thinking outside the box, his thingy will be characterised as (as he claims it is) a politically naive data based business argument (though in his thing the data is less backed by actual data than by quite general observational claims that border on baseless assumption or at the very least extremely contested ground in an area of science that is currently under attack for having a lot of unreplicable results). On the other hand, it can and will be characterised as a form of activism that's inappropriate and mean.
ETA in response to some people who are surprised at my attitude on this, asserting that this kind of thing causes real harm to his colleagues.
Maybe it's just that I've heard this kind of argument so much from so many people (often about women in comedy) that I can't feel it as particularly anything but an uphill slope. I guess the level of anti woman stuff counts more or less as a hostile work environment, but I've been doing this for a while, and it's better than it was. The thing that makes the most difference is just to be there and be good. I don't know that there's a short cut and the only thing I have experienced as an efficient use of personal energy to do from this end is to be good at the job, support other women, and where prejudice and testosterone start to get creepy, act quickly to resolve it before it gets criminal.
I just don't think it's as obvious as people seem to be asserting that he should be fired. I don't quite see the level of harm and malice that's being projected onto it, though certainly it seems to be the act of a man who will never have the political savvy to get a promotion.
I think it'll stir up more shit than it solves and gives a martyr to the cause of anti-SJW people who will characterise it as an innocent and politically naive form of the former. But maybe i just feel that way cause it's pretty hard to run a comedian out of work for anything short of criminal douchiness, and even then, it depends on what brand of criminality, and actually, rarely even then.
To my thoughts about the piece (Which came a lot earlier in the original version before I realised the level of rage and certainty circulating this issue requires me to state context for my own uncertainties).
I think some of his claims about women fall into the "women shouldn't do marathons, their wombs will fall out!" (This was a real argument against women running. So far, so good.) also, relevant here because though by the numbers (finishing times) women are 'less good' and (therefore by the logic he is using) 'less suited' for athletic pursuits like running, (and presumably 'more suited' for physical pursuits that involve... I don't know, grace, charm, empathy and babymaking, like dance or acting) I don't think he'd argue for fewer male actors or dancers or that women shouldn't be encouraged into athletic pursuits. Also women HAVE BEEN the computer-people. Like, for ages. It was seen as secretarial type work - women were technical but not creative. Now it's the opposite. Such tendencies tend not to be as obvious as we'd like them to be. Like the classic "blue used to be for girls and pink for boys" switcharoo. Your sense of what's obvious about the world is rarely as precise as you'd like to think.
I definitely disagree with his argument about reducing education and outreach programs. Google can spend money - even if women (or whoever) are less inclined towards coding by nature (or nurture, we still don't know. Also I think it's unlikely. But even if), I think google can spare the money, and it's worth it both to decrease the exceptionalism and smug ivory towerness of code-bros and to give those outliers the best chance possible.
Corey White (who talks in his standup and writing about being the child of a drug addict and a violent criminal, traumatised by abuse in both his biological and many foster homes) is functional and excellent in part because he was given a scholarship to a fancy private school.
Statistically it was a bad idea to give him a hand up. In reality, it was a very good idea. Corey is brilliant.
We can afford to lean towards broad education programs that specifically target people 'less suited' to things.
The worst case scenario EVEN IF you accept his essentialist claims about gendered tendencies, is that as a result of these programs, some cooperative nurturing housewives with no ambition know some Python. The best case scenario is that (as with the corporate world) we discover new ways of doing things that are advantaged by the perspectives and different (insofar as they are different) skill sets.
further (and better) writing on the topic by someone more qualified than I am is here: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788
Comments
Well, as I said, I think it might be the right choice to fire him purely for a lack of judgment. But freedom to air even repugnant ideas is important, and I'd have gone with education and debate over ejection.
Gabe
I think that people can be too easily outraged, but when someone spends his time at work writing an elaborate manifesto saying a large number of his co-workers are biologically inferior based on a middle-school understanding of biology, and makes his company look like horse's ass, I can't really see that as a wrongful firing, regardless of how much anger there is online or not. I think it's worth separating out whether or not people get proportionately outraged online in general (probably not), with whether or not this guy deserved to be fired (probably).
