skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's obviously not good for society but it's also wrong to believe you will make any positive impact by throwing away all influence you have and effectively ruining your own life.

Do you think this person that has been fired has gained anything? Do you think anything will change because of this memo?

I don't.
Yeah, Hacker News is a nightmare any time an issue like this happens, but I'm glad at least that some people out in the real world see this for what it is. This engineer deserved to be fired. I mean there's hundreds of of bro-y all-male "meritocratic" tech startups he can go join, so this still just a slap on the wrist.
You have to consider his concept as an analogy. Infinity is a thing inside this universe, it may not be outside.
> On the one hand they need to grow their pool of talent and make the non majority to feel comfortable

It isn't useful to make people comfortable in a way that is easily destabilized by other information (be it opinion or scientific research). It's actually terribly fragile and it does a real disservice to people.
How'd that work out for the guy who just got fired? Think he has grounds to be wailing? I guess he just needs to go live elsewhere... kinda like I'm saying.
It's because it's bullshit.
It seems he's been fired for being wrong even as Google employees push all sorts of other harmful inaccurate stereotypes publically on social media. The hubris and oppression we feel underneath the unaccountable and inescapable reign of Google and Facebook grows more terrifying with every new revelation.
Well, yes, except it wasn't alien technology it was old nazi UFOs.

You don't expect me to provide evidence of a secret program that stayed secret do you? Because if so, you've got me.

Here's my current favorite: http://www.doctormarysmonkey.com/index.htm

> How the unsolved murder of a doctor, a secret laboratory in New Orleans and cancer-causing monkey viruses are linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK assassination and emerging global epidemics.

(My point is not that any one specific weird thing happened, but that some weird things did.)
Hiring people to achieve a diversity in the company and not hiring the candidate who fits better for the position.
This is a great response.

http://jackbaruth.com/?p=7152
It's neither difficult nor arguable, but it's a bit of a cop-out. Google is, of course, well within their legal rights to fire the employee. The 1A applies only to government restrictions on speech.

But the larger question, of whether it is good that a particular political ideology, adhered to by a small minority of the country, should hold such sway over public discourse that to challenge any of its dogmas is to commit career suicide, remains. This is a trend that is only accelerating, and it's going nowhere good.
If they put 'make america great again' or 'death to white men' posters up on the bulletin boards at work in the break room, yeah, they'll fire them too. It's against the agreements they signed when they got hired.

If you don't like it don't sign and go work somewhere else.
I think you're doing contortions here.

He says that Google 'has created' (past tense) a discriminatory hiring practice.

Presumably his coworkers were hired in the past and not the present or future.

Thus, the hiring practices that prevailed when his coworkers were hired were discriminatory, per the author.
Please be more civil and careful with your language. You just called another member of your community a bigot for being a member of a particular political party, not even for their particular beliefs.

A bigot is precisely, "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance."
I guess not, that's pretty disappointing. Hopefully we'll get it eventually, though.
So your opinion can cause physical harm against others. Someone's livelihood should be jeapardized in this event. People are suffering right this second around the world by those that advocate the same thoughts as you are. Thoughts leads to words, words leads to actions, actions lead to atrocities.
I hear you, but I disagree. If you haven't had a chance yet, then I'd suggest you read this pots by Yonatan Zunger. He puts it a 100 times better than I ever could.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
There is no positive and negative racial discrimination. There is only racial discrimination and its always a bad thing.

If you are advocating for racial discrimination against European people then your no different then European people who advocated for racial discrimination against Africans.

There was many books and arguments that advocated for discrimination as a 'good thing' in the 18th and 19th century. They are as morally bankrupt as the arguments made today in favour of racial discrimination against Europeans.

A more perfect union is not achieve in any sense by adopting racial discriminatory policies. You are headed in the opposite direction. These policies will be short lived and overturned, but in the meantime cause enormous harm and injustice.

Its very important that well intentioned people understand that they are playing with fire that they will not be able to put out with this issue. Racial discrimination in the 21st century, especially in education and employment are for all intent and purpose a form of slavery. And the people who are being effected by these illegitimate racist policies are growing a fire inside and it is spreading and that fire is going to grow and grow.

Trump is just the first spark of this fire if you understand me. There is righteous indignation of these policies and severity of the opposition to these injustices are going to be much more explosive then the 1960s were in terms of racial and societal disintegration.

You can not fix the problem of a perceived under-representation of certain groups such as Africans by forcefully removing and ghettoizing hundreds of millions of Dispirit European ethnic and religious groups from employment and other opportunities. I simply do not think many on the left understand the gravity of the repercussions that are unfolding because of these policies.
Can you give any evidence that this is actually what occurs, that the "better fit" is not selected?
Yes. I’ve also read other articles. The stance presented by the memo author does not represent “broad” scientific consensus, it represents a pseudo-scientific basis for continued discrimination. The same thing was tried back in the 1800s to explain why certain humans should be enslaved to others.
If you are not hiring for skill you will be out of business soon enough
Ideas must be able to be freely discussed, argued, and debated in a free and democratic society.

Are you prepared to suppress and jail based on speech and words? Because that's what you're advocating for, and that's what authoritarian/totalitarian governments do.
I am not surprised that this happened but a little dismayed. While we all advocate free speech we punish those who exercise free speech. Sometimes it is not what we say but the manner in which we distribute our message. Maybe that was the unpardonable sin....posting it through the Google systems.

I do not in any way agree with the content of the engineer in question but I will always advocate for his right to free speech. I wonder if Google would have fired a female engineer for taking the same actions or for writing a paper stating that Google was not taking enough steps toward diversity in their workforce.
San Francisco Bay Area | Full-time, Technical Co-founder

Looking for a technical co-founder to work with me on a project that I'm working on (Mobile retail + AI).

I currently work as a S/W engineer at a research lab of an internet search company :)

Drop me a line at harsh.version.1 {at} gmail.com
This is not what the document stated. Here is the quote about "lowering the bar" in its original form:

> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

The author deliberately narrows the scope of this sentence stating that the hiring practices decrease the false negative rate, not increasing the false positive rate. Stating that the false negative rate is lowered for diverse candidates is to say that qualified, non-diverse, candidates are rejected at a greater rate than qualified and diverse candidates. It is not stating that unqualified, diverse, candidates are accepted at a greater rate.
The legal right to free speech is indeed only about the government. Free and open discourse as a virtue for citizens of a republic is a much broader concept.
Google's code of conduct might be illegal. Regardless of how inaccurate the employee's claims, firing him for it is possibly grounds for improper termination.
> And listed data and studies to back up his claim. That it is controversial, does not mean it isn't true, and you haven't refuted it, simply stated it as if on it's face should have been grounds for dismissal.

He listed references that indicate, when viewed broadly, that men and women can exhibit different observable personality characteristics. That was not the argument of his memo. His argument was that, because of this broadly measurable difference, this leads to women being less interested in computer science (although not to the degree of similar STEM fields, oddly enough!) and therefore he shouldn't have to be subjected to bias training or be burdened with any other sort of program that suggests maybe, perhaps, potentially the social culture in tech/SV could be exacerbating this.

> All we really know is that the Silicon Valley thought bubble, and political intolerance is extreme to such a degree that people have to watch what they say and think at all times so as not to anger the thought police. The moral superiors.

Did the thought police make this guy write and publish a work memo suggesting some women are too neurotic to be software engineers?

> No room for discussion. No room for debate. Just fall in line and be sure to advertise your virtue and 100% agree with views that the political left mandates you to hold.

How about don't write a company-wide memo that insinuates some of your coworkers aren't there by merit because they don't have the biological composition to stomach the job? It's not like somebody was having a conversation with this guy in the break room, asked his opinion on diversity and ran to the press to start a witch hunt against some random Google engineer.
Suppose that you work for the company that consists of 80% vimers and 20% emacsers.

All documentation is geared towards vimers. There are interests groups geared towards vimers. No one questions you if you are a vimer. If you are a stuck with some error as an emacser there are fewer people to turn to or discuss your favorite text editor, so some people start to suggest that emacsers are worse programmers.

The company analyzes the research and decides that vim and emacs programmers are equal. If the company decides to invest into supporting emacsers, by requiring more documentation to be written in emacs and funding emacs meetups, it is not a discrimination against vimers. The company recognized that if it won't offset some benefits vimers have they would continue to lose out on a group of talented programmers.
What I see is not a modal. It is a "hero" image, a sentence, and a button flowed into the normal text of the page. I just kept scrolling down, and it bothered me no more. I'm running uBO, but I doubt that has any effect?
Honestly I think this more Authoritarian / Libertarian than Right / Left.

I personally am Left, Libertarian Left.

I disagree with many of the assertions in the memo, however I do not believe he should have been fired.

Most of the drum beating from SJW's and Diversity Police are from an Authoritarian World view, where tolerance of views they disagree with is not allowed, can not be openly discussed, and should be suppressed by any means necessary

We need to expand the conversation beyond Left / Right, to include what is means to be Authoritarian, or Libertarian
I don't think that ex-Googler read the document. Nothing he attacks him on seems to be in it.
They can hire Christians as long as the hires are intelligent enough to realize that (for example) leaving Chick Tracts on their coworkers' desks is probably not acceptable workplace behavior.

Plenty of Google employees are christians and none of them have been fired for it (it's legally protected, for one thing)
> You have chosen to support virulent bigots and misogynists

Citation?
I doubt it, but let me say that I really hope it's true that what this guy wrote qualifies as a Protected Concerted Action under the NLRA, because Silicon Valley could badly use an education in the protections of the NLRA. From what I can see from this vantage, the largest companies in the valley are utterly dependent on the compliance of their employees to function, and those employees are being bought off for table scraps.
Managing localization files in Rails
If he held his opinion purely in the public sphere, I'd agree with you - but he posted it in an internal companywide manner that directly impacts how he'll be able to work with his coworkers.

Being divisive at work isn't good for business.
>scrum master

Serious question, do you find real value out of this position?
As a white man, I have concerns that my ethnic / gender group is being persecuted. How should I raise these issues for discussion, in a professional environment?
Medium term what will happen is regular people will get sick of virtue signaling and fake concern and feelings of entitlement because people will realize the whole thing is being gamed (and "weaponized" to some degree). And there will be an overcorrection --kind of like what happened in the past election.

They should have taken the mature approach and dealt with it more precisely --even if that would have upset a number of people who simply want to see revenge or feel wronged by an opinion.
If you haven't read this post by Yonatan Zunger (former Googler) that deals with this specific situation, then I suggest you do:

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...

It makes the clear case that this employee went beyond opinion and created a harmful situation for himself and his colleagues.
I just read it for the first time, it's actually much better written than I thought. I was prepared for it to be horrible, but he brings up some valid points. Some I don't agree with, but he is right that we have made it unacceptable to discuss this subject.

I do encourage people to read it and make their own opinion, there are so many other opinions on this now, the only way to get back to reality is to read it for yourself.
> You have chosen to support virulent bigots and misogynists…but don’t want to be called one yourself? Methinks you protest a little too much.

Supporting a GOP candidate isn't necessarily making you a bigot. Not all candidates are bigots. I personally am a libertarian, and I get made fun of so often it's pretty insane.

Repeatedly, I've been yelled at (yes yelled at) by liberals claiming I "helped elect the next Hitler". This has happened more than once. At work, at social events, etc. and it's insane that just not supporting what I feel is also bigotry (liberal ideals) that I'm treated that way[1].

[1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry
Closet conservatives (and other moral minorities) across the Valley are now virtually guaranteed to shut their closet doors even tighter.

Post election, I recall my timelines erupt with emotion -- outrage, despair, betrayal -- then subdue to reflection. Some called for the need to truly reach out to those across the aisle and to listen and understand, earnestly lending an ear even to views that we strongly oppose.

Recent events will be a step back in such relations, as dissent has been dismissed demonstrably without such considerations.

When the people we must understand in order to reach bipartisanship go into hiding for fear of being outed, broadening our perspective becomes difficult.
Right. Which is why many female engineers do not want the appearance of preferential treatment in the hiring process.
Speech=violence is perhaps the most hyperbolically nonsensical belief held by any political group today.
Way to prove his point, Google HR.

Oh and by the way, apparently the memo has been circulating for a while. He only got fired once it became a news story...
people of different races, different skin colors, different anything, are in fact different from each other in a genetic way. every person is different from every other person on a genetic basis. i am sorry to be direct, but it is with no hatred or racism that i say the following: if a group of people all share the genetic trait that their skin is a certain color, it is possible they share other common genetic traits. this is simple logic, and it is correct. how deep these differences are, whether or not they are cognitive or psychological, has yet to be scientifically determined or even investigated. personally, i dont think its important for these things to be investigated. as long as all doors of opportunity are open to all people regardless of any genetic quality, i think we will be ok.

it is important that we all broach the ugly subject of racial genetics with rational and compassionate minds. firing or punishing (socially and otherwise) people who try to discuss things such as this will lead to much worse outcomes in my opinion.
It's not about virtue signaling, he was almost certain to be terminated just because it was a ridiculously stupid thing to say - you can't tell your teammates that they were hired because their employer lowered the bar and expect people not to be upset about it (and that's 100% what he did, he also made up pseudo-scientific bullshit to try to justify it, but he flat out insulted countless people within his company).

Given that the document has (rightfully) alienated women inside and outside his organization, it becomes impossible for this person to be an effective member of the team:

- The next time a woman interviews for his team, and he votes against hiring, how does the hiring committee interpret that vote?

- The next time he's peer reviewed by a woman, how does that review get interpreted?

- The next time he peer reviews a woman, how does that review get interpreted?

- The next time a female candidate interviews with the author and is denied, how likely is it that the candidate will believe they had a fair interview, or is the organization perpetually exposed to increased legal risk forever?

Such a manifesto is not just fundamentally wrong, it's toxic and shows a profound lack of awareness for any professional.
Just add a line your hosts file mapping lolcathost to 127.0.0.1 and you never have to worry about it again.

No that's not a typo
Where is Google's rebuttal of this memo? All anyone is saying is "it's wrong" etc, but where is an ACTUAL breakdown of what was incorrect about what he wrote?

I feel like most "rebuttal's" are like listening to Donald Trump. "He's wrong and we're right. We're definitely right.".

If you do have a link, please share!
That's really interesting. Can you tell more about how it is implemented technology wise?
I didn't read 'all progressives' but rather that the loudest and least factual agitators do it in the name progressiveness.

Does my alternate interpretation make your comment a tripling down?

Is this comment somehow quadrupling down?
http://www.spsp.org/blog/stereotype-accuracy-response

> Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable effects in all of social psychology. Richard et al (2003) found that fewer than 5% of all effects in social psychology exceeded r’s of .50. In contrast, nearly all consensual stereotype accuracy correlations and about half of all personal stereotype accuracy correlations exceed .50.
You're automatically assuming the pool's distribution matches Google's, which it does not. There are other companies with more representative gender and race distributions.

Even if their hiring pool of candidates didn't have a fully diverse distribution, that doesn't automatically make it okay to have a company that ranks poorly on diversity. It suggests that you should examine how your pool is filled with candidates and whether you're committing serious errors that cause you to miss out on top-class talent - like only recruiting from ivy league schools, or excluding people without 4-year degrees. Both of those things could unfairly exclude people of all races and genders and it would further reduce the diversity of your candidate pool.
Why? Those don't mean the same thing.
This is such a funny statement to be made in a place that values "hackers" and decries the need for formal education
It's been around less than a decade and jury is still out whether it will even succeed or not yet, hence why I wrote "potential". But assuming it does prove sound and reliable over the long term, then its best value is as a hedge against governments screwing up their currency, like Venezuela and other distressed economies. There are already US dollar black markets in those places, and new cryptocurrency black markets are starting to form now too.

As for "unbanked", I don't even know why you mention it unless you're setting up a strawman to knock down. But here, let me do that for you - people who are unbanked don't have access to financial services b/c they don't have money, b/c they live somewhere that economic norms, institutions, and growth all have problems that make it hard to create wealth. Solve those problems and the banks and finserve folks will come running and those people won't be unbanked anymore. But I have yet to see a good case for how cryptocurrency in its current incarnation will solve those problems.
Swapit Update: Performance and Stability Improvements
The problem is not with infinity per se.

If the universe gets cloned one time every second that would still be a huge claim.

A million times every nanosecond is even a bigger claim.

Now imagine how many states the universe can be in, and how many times a second can be meaningfully divided.

If you can solve the "one clone every second" then I would be satisfied.
"And if the meteorite had arrived ten minutes earlier, or ten minutes later, it would still no doubt have inflicted devastation, but the dinosaurs would still be here and you wouldn't."

What does the author mean by we wouldn't be here? Were there no other animals during the Jurassic age? Won't humans be living just like other animals? Maybe be not as advanced but nevertheless be around hiding etc. What am I missing?
Well said. I do think the tech world needs more diversity, absolutely. It's just that I fundamentally disagree with the way it's being managed. I believe that tech companies need to be working with minorities and women at an earlier age (high schoolers, college freshmen) to groom them and steer them towards STEM careers. What I don't agree with is quota systems and affirmative action programs. I also strongly object to those who criticize these practices being labeled as bigots and mysogynists.
> Might it be true that women are just naturally much less attracted to STEM than men?

No.

In India in 2015, 45% of CS undergrads were women[0]. In the US, in 1984, it was 37%[1], as opposed to 18% in 2010. The downvotes are because you can tell the answer to your question in about 5 minutes of Googling.

[0]: http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf
[1]: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-all-w...
You can take any statement and rephrase so that it sounds horrible. This is just sophistry.

That whole paragraph is saying that men and women, __as populations__ , have biological differences in psychology, temperament and interests. In prosperous societies, men and women naturally assume complementary, rather than overlapping, roles.

> We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.

Do you disagree with this? And if so, why?

"Facts don't care about your feelings".
Google News Blows Now Try These Guys.. :o)