Google memo: employee fired for memo questioning corporate culture

There's been a big fuss over an internal memo circulated at Google regarding its corporate culture as it pertains to its diversity policies and employees' freedom to question its culture. Recently, the author of the memo was terminated by the company. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-diversity-idUSKBN1AO088
The memo in full: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf
tl;dr of what the memo is about (taken directly from the linked PDF):

● Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety​.
● This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too
sacred to be honestly discussed.
● The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this
ideology.

○ Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
○ Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
​

● Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we
don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.
● Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

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Some key facts:
The employee responsible has a doctorate in systems biology from Harvard (source)
Much of the basic science mentioned in the memo has been corroborated by other scientists (source), though they don't necessarily agree with his conclusions or how they pertain to Google

What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree or disagree with the memo? Do you believe it was right for Google to fire him over it?

Honestly, after him having written that memo, he's established himself as a disruption to the workplace. I haven't read the whole thing, but just skimming through and considering its length or tone, it reads as a manifesto, not like something that gets shoved into the suggestions box. There's a reason that you don't discuss politics or religion at work, and this is exactly it. If a person with left-wing leanings wrote a similar document and with a similar intended audience about how Google's hiring practices are too conservative and don't go far enough in creating a diverse workplace, and calling their colleagues blind and ultimately criticizes our culture and society at large, I think the outcome would have been the same. Bottom line is that in a professional setting there are certain things you cannot do and still have your way and that includes sticking out politically like a sore thumb. Might be sad, but that's just the way of large corporate businesses no matter where you go. Given how the document is written, I imagine he figured that this could've blown up and that was all part of the plan to begin with.

Kanzler said:

Given how the document is written, I imagine he figured that this could've blown up and that was all part of the plan to begin with.

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This is the biggest aspect that stuck out to me - I don't know if he considered the possibility of being fired, but it reads like something that he intended for a worldwide audience, given the stature of Google, rather than something that would make the rounds of corporate workplaces and then be relegated into only the memory of a few sympathisers. It very much reads like his version of the Ninety-five Theses and that he expected this to become a global discussion, regardless of the consequences.

Person says lame, bad things and is punished for it. What a surprise

Just a reminder, freedom of speech protects you from government prosecution. It doesn't protect you from private entities and everyday people punishing you for your speech.

This man's free speech rights were not violated.

He called his own company a "biased ideological echo chamber" and made some pretty questionable statements, leaving out sources. I read the memo with an open mind and he made some interesting points, but I noticed there was a lot of stereotyping too. One of his more questionable statements was where he said that women on average have higher neuroticism (greater anxiety and lower stress tolerance) than men, linking to wikipedia as his source. Now is that a fair thing to say? I personally don't think so.

So on to my thoughts... :P I don't believe the guy is sexist, but he does make a lot of pretty serious generalizations, which many people seem to be prone to doing, sadly. To my knowledge though, his job wasn't actually being threatened until after the memo circulated. At this point he turned himself into a controversial attraction in the business, which lead to upper management taking action and him being fired. Seems to me like a decision google made to save themselves from backlash really.

I definitely think he's sexist, he said a lot of objectively wrong & dumb things coming from a point of belittling women

He wrote this on company time using company resources, that alone is grounds for firing someone.

I think the risk of him being fired would've been minimized if he had just wrote this at home on his own time. He makes a few good points here and there that I can agree with, but he's still a sexist twit who succumbed to making broad generalizations that, at best, have little basis in reality. Using wikipedia as your fact-checking source also loses you points.

From the article.

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren?t just
socially constructed because:
? They?re universal across human cultures
? They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
? Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify
and act like males
? The underlying traits are highly heritable
? They?re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I?m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
differences are ?just.? I?m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don?t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences
are small and there?s significant overlap between men and women, so you can?t say anything
about an individual given these population level distributions.

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Is it really so radical to postulate - not even declare, but postulate - that real biological differences between men and women may be associated with psychological differences, leading to different outcomes in job seeking and performance?

He is not saying - and I am not saying - that discrimination isn't real or that discrimination is justified. Of course it happens, and I agree we should strive not to do it. But what is the value of attributing inherent differences between men and women to discrimination?

I suppose it's very valuable if you're interested in shutting down people's speech. It's becoming increasingly acceptable to ignore science and promote violence so that people don't have to hear things they don't like. By the time we realize where that road leads, it's probably going to be too late to turn around.

Tek said:

From the article.



Is it really so radical to postulate - not even declare, but postulate - that real biological differences between men and women may be associated with psychological differences, leading to different outcomes in job seeking and performance?

Or is this just another event at the Outrage Olympics?

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Who is questioning such postulation? Who is outraged?

Kanzler said:

Who is questioning such postulation? Who is outraged?

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Seriously? Are you on social media?

But even more than questioning the postulation, the Google execs themselves are clearly taking a position that such things ought not be spoken.

Anyways, I figured people would hone in on part of that post and use it to avoid discussing the real arguments I'm making, so I'm retracting those statements. Not going to say anything else about it here.

Tek said:

Seriously?

Anyways, I figured people would hone in on that and use it to avoid discussing the real arguments I'm making, so I'm retracting the statement. Not going to say anything else about it here.

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Cuz like, no one here seems to express opposition to the mere postulation that men and women have biologically determined psychological differences. Everyone knows that a person's testosterone/estrogen levels affect their personality. People get hormone replacement therapy for a whole bunch of reasons and everybody's anecdotes are out there.

But that's not all he did, is it? I outlined some reasons that would be sufficient to explain his firing, and I believe most people who read my post are on board with that.

And to discuss outrage, it seems that conservatives are the ones outraged this time, at least much more so than the proponents of the liberal-slanted ideas that you seem to oppose.

So of course I would hone in on that - you want to have a discussion on something that is very much on your agenda, but I honestly don't think what you're saying is relevant to the situation discussed in this thread. If you want to have that discussion, fine, but like these hypothetical outraged people at the mere postulation of blah blah blah are not amongst your audience here. Or maybe they are, but I think you'd have to make a case for that.

Tek said:

But even more than questioning the postulation, the Google execs themselves are clearly taking a position that such things ought not be spoken.

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Yeah, I disagree. I honestly think some people are overpoliticizing it. I've mentioned my reasons justifying why I don't think Google has taken a position on the content of the speech in my previous post.

Tek said:

From the article.



Is it really so radical to postulate - not even declare, but postulate - that real biological differences between men and women may be associated with psychological differences, leading to different outcomes in job seeking and performance?

He is not saying - and I am not saying - that discrimination isn't real or that discrimination is justified. Of course it happens, and I agree we should strive not to do it. But what is the value of attributing inherent differences between men and women to discrimination?

I suppose it's very valuable if you're interested in shutting down people's speech. It's becoming increasingly acceptable to ignore science and promote violence so that people don't have to hear things they don't like. By the time we realize where that road leads, it's probably going to be too late to turn around.

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I think you'll note that Google's response does not deny that premise but rather that these should not be used as a motivation for othering entire groups of people in a workplace where it has been proven time and time again that those differences (or pre-dispositions, or statistical averages, whatever it is you want to call them) play no part. This is unfortunately what the memo did in a few specific cases, and I'll explain below. The problem is not with the underlying 'biological' premise. The problem is applying that knowledge of so-called different attributes and drawing very, very harmful and nonsensical conclusions on what it means to be a software engineer. When you actually look at what the guy wrote, the "science" is complete BS:

- According to this memo, women in general have more "Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas", and that "partly explains why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas" and that "comparatively more women work on front end which deals with both people and aesthetics". This entire interpretation is 100% bullshit but what especially gets me is that last part, which shows a severe misunderstanding of both "people and aesthetics" as well as any work involved in front end engineering. It literally does not make any sense, and once again?even though that might not have been his 'intention'?is dehumanising and just all in all a really careless generalisation on why women would prefer a type of job. Plus, none of this was cited?this is purely extrapolation from a Wikipedia link which talks about deviations in personality traits in "the Big Five"?which in and of itself is not a closed problem.

- "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things" and that "We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration." These two concepts are a) completely unrelated, b) throwing around 'pair programming' as a way to enhance focus on people shows a misunderstanding about both 'pair programming' and 'people', and in that same sentence he later goes on to suggest that programs to get female students into coding may be deceiving "people-oriented" women into thinking that coding is for them. The entire premise of this argument is *incredibly* stupid and harmful?in no way shape or form should you *ever* prevent somebody from learning how to code just because you feel their motivations aren't "related to feelings" or whatever bullshit you're trying to say. I'm even having a hard time actually grasping what the hell it is this guy's trying to get at by suggesting that an overlap of people who "care about people" and "people who like coding" is inherently harmful in the long run.

- "De-emphasize empathy." This entire paragraph is something that so many companies and individuals in tech have been trying to fight because on paper it is philosophically sound, but at the end of the day this is a matter of preference and should never be held as an objective truth to success. I strongly believe that empathy makes better products and makes better teams, and the assertion that 'empathy' in and of itself "harbours irrational and dangerous biases" is complete bullshit and IMO shows that this comes from someone who's simply not used to shutting up for a minute and thinking that maybe there's an entire world out there that doesn't revolve around them. "Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts"?maybe, if you're in the military. Google should never position itself as an unemotional company with unemotional products. Again?this is a matter of choice. But Google disagrees and therefore is free to exercise that disagreement. Teams should be self-policing on this.

The entire rest of the "white paper" could very well have several reasonable arguments but just these short few paragraphs IMO make giving this bullcrap any time of day a worthless effort. All this guy's trying to do is pretend that software engineering is supposed to be this cold, heartless occupation where only the fiercest and brightest are allowed to compete and thrive. Anyone who's worked in a team and met more than two people in their lifetime knows this is based on pure crap, and is ultimately more divisive than it is encouraging.

It's pretty telling that the dude immediately jumped to be interviewed by the alt right the moment he could

It's a little unfortunate that there can't seem to be a conversation about this among the Google people because they fired the guy (not necessarily wrongly) so quickly, but also because they cancelled their follow-up attempt at a company-wide talk after some employees got doxxed and were afraid to speak up. Now all sides are going to isolate themselves out of fear or resentment. The people who might feel like their misguided ideas on gender are being silenced will just dig in more strongly.