skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified women. Because you have to hire women as the diversity program says.

Are you saying there are no situations in which applying a systematic adjustment as a function of gender to interview scores could result in a predictable net-fitness-increase in the resulting skill distribution of hired people?

> If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program. Imagine being a woman and being hired with this program, does it mean they hired me because I am a woman or because I am the best candidate for the position? (I said woman but applies to any minority group)

That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified?
> Regardless of the validity of these arguments, it should be immediately clear that the document would produce no substantive change from a policy perspective

That's the problem right there.
this was my take on the whole issue. damore was basically poking Google with a stick and daring them to fire him by publishing an inflammatory political memo via an internal channel - pretty idiotic any way you look at it irregardless of whether his memo was right/wrong/somewhere in between.
No, this is one of the problems we have in society today is this misunderstanding of Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction

Not just from government censorship, but from SOCIETY censorship as well

Governments, at least Western Government, are a reflection of society in general often delayed by a generation or so. As such if society deems fit to Censor something often that translates into the government censoring the same thing just a few year later.

We must be always mindful of threats to free speech not just from government but from society at large.

It is incumbent upon everyone to respect everyone else's freedom of expression, individually
You only said "probably not", so you are also implying it is probably true. Why didn't you just say "absolutely not"?
By that logic how is anyone supposed to criticize any hiring process? Of course hinting that the process is flawed will imply that some of his colleagues shouldn't have made it through.
For much the same reasons as not operating all the trains on your schedule, I guess - apathy, incompetence, mismanagement, under-resourcing, etc. It seems odd to expect a transit agency that isn't good at operating trains to be great at providing data.
The manifesto clearly mentions hiring policies, which apply to people who aren't in the treehouse. Do keep up.
Manifesto dude: Women/Blacks are too stupid to be engineers

Women/Blacks: Fuck this guy

You: Why are those women/blacks being so rude?
He may have not told his direct teammates they lowered the bar but he certainly implied that women and underrepresented groups have at a whole at Google:

> The Harm of Google’s biases:

...

> - A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates

...

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

Do you really not see the concerns this engineer has introduced for Google over his ability to objectively judge his peers who are women or members of an underrepresented group or at least how such coworkers might now have these concerns if they find themselves working with him? Do you not see how the long-term detriment and risk to Google could be (substantially) greater than the value the engineer brings to the company? Even if you remove the high-mindedness and virtues that tech companies like to project in their PR, do you not see how this is the only rational business choice for a Fortune 50 company?
Just abandon the labels. You'll get nowhere trying to say, "those people are X not Y, Y is much better." No since in being tribal with a group of people who are so diverse they will always fail to meet you expectations.

Person over party.
No, he's sort of right. He extrapolates a bit and makes it sound much worse than it was. For someone who is claiming to understand engineering so well it seems odd that he'd conflate arguments (that were poorly made imo) about preferences within a demographic group with accusing that group of being inferior at engineering. He never suggested women were bad at their jobs, just that maybe there was a biological component to why they were less interested in it to begin with.

Edit: just to reiterate, I don't agree with that view, I'm convinced it's mostly cultural issues that are to blame.
Depends on the type of persecution you're concerned about. On what basis do you perceive being oppressed for existing as a white male at work?
Hellbanned for questioning libertarianism? It'd be easy for me to miss them, but I'm not familiar with any such cases -- help me out?
> 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!)

I mean, he titled the section of the document that talks about those effects "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech." But hey, those are sinful ideas, so he must have been a sinful man to have even entertained them in the first place.
All the good things you're not being right now. Why? What does the contempt help, do you think? Why do you think it helps at all?
I'm sure you have some justification for that ridiculous statement but I'm specifically not asking.
> Will they fire every Trump voter and every hardcore feminist now too?

If you read the post I was replying to, it would be obvious why I chose those two examples.
I thought that was pretty funny lol! They probably weren't expecting all that traffic from hacker news
Four scientists with no expertise in the field of diversity and, as a result, in no position to argue that the scientific argument made justifies the conclusions drawn (as one of them admits).

A scientific argument is more than "Here's some science, here are some facts and here's the conclusion" - you have to use the science to explain the observed facts, and doing so takes more than saying "And therefore". There was no attempt to do so whatsoever, and so (from a scientific perspective) this was junk.
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This xkcd is wholly appropriate to this and almost every discussion in the tech industry.
Particularly apt:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
Most people would be tempted to cheat, but would not actually cheat. So love must be pretty strong to counter such a large difference in physical appearance.

There's no doubt that physical attraction plays a strong - perhaps dominant - role in determining who we pair up with. But after initial pairing most people develop a deep emotional bond that counteracts the desire to switch partners when someone more attractive comes along.
Accepting arguendo that "tolerance is not a moral precept", and assuming you're referring to Yonatan Zunger's essay, you might consider that he likened it to a peace treaty. Which is now broken. Breaking a peace treaty means active hostilities. Seems like a really bad time to do that, given the current US administration.
Also Bohm was unpopular with the US government in the early 1950's - he had to leave for Brazil because of McCarthyism and anti-communist feeling.
What was the project that you submitted? And, for comparison, what is the commercial product Segment will be releasing?

I hope someone from Segment responds to your concerns.
I've never interpreted diversity programs as telling minorities we are stupider. Universities are a great example, wealthier people with more money can afford better educations and test prep for their children. If the "merit" you refer to is manufactured by circumstance, and the circumstances are weighted in favor of the already powerful, why should we accept the status quo & pretend the admissions standard are an objective measurement?

Quotas are a crude tool but I'd rather see something like that than simply accept a world with a cycle of the powerful remaining powerful in large part due to the less powerful never having opportunity.
In the event of a major catastrophe, it really won't make any difference who is carrying the insurance. They're all going to run out of money and will only pay off the early birds or a fraction of the policy's coverage to all. And by major, here, I'm think an 8 earthquake rupturing the San Andreas fault from San Diego to the Tehachapis or a multi-state cat 5 tornado swarm in OK, NE, KS, IA, and MO. Are they likely? Sure but improbable. The joker, however, will be the effect of global warming and what its going to do to the weather.
So, a consentual relationship gone wrong. I stand by my earlier statement.

And forgive me, I don't care who you are; I care that someone was railroaded for a consensual relationship held primarily outside the community. Gor is unpopular; it hasn't gained the acceptance homosexual relationships have, and this outrage tainted everything.
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There's some assymetry at work here: everybody will remember that Google fired "that engineer" who wrote the memo, but a month or two from now, nobody will remember his name. He still has a possible future career.
I have been told that. But since this was for a server, I specifically chose Ryzen for ECC support, so my Ryzen system is running 2400 MHz ECC.
This is great. I already understood most of BTC and ETH protocols, but learned some new bits, thanks for sharing!
But at the same time, aren't you therefore implying that such diversity programs are inherently above reproach?

To be fair to you, I don't think you actually think that. But it's almost like the author of the diversity memo touched a third rail by suggesting that perhaps "lowered standards" could be an outcome from such diversity efforts. Is that a fair consideration to raise or is that beyond the pale now?
The best way to get revenge on someone is by putting a Trump bumper sticker on her car. Watch how easily anti-Trump people think it's moral to scratch or attack someone's car because of her personal beliefs.
Why would we expect a bio PhD to be an expert in social psych and sociology?
Because they fire people who make stupid decisions?
He's saying that Google hires people for the wrong reason. He does not say that he has a problem with hiring any group.
I had the impression it started as a kind of joke among progressives in the 70s or so, a ha-ha-only-serious one. Later their opponents appropriated it, in the 80s when I started paying attention.
Actually I think diversity quotas imply one of two things:

- Underrepresented groups are by default less qualified than average

- Hiring decisionmakers are incapable of assessing people objectively enough to overcome inherent biases

Are there other possible consistent implications? Honest question.

It seems to me either scenario is fundamentally toxic.
It's incredibly ironic that a company that apparently cares about diversity enough to have a "Vice President for Diversity" fired an employee for presenting an opposing viewpoint - to their diversity policy of all things.

Further evidence that Google and the other large institutions don't actually give a rat's ass about "diversity". Diversity has absolutely nothing to do with diversity of thought, and is only concerned with normalizing racial/gender composition to present the illusion that discrimination and biological variation are non-existent (except for discrimination against males, whites, and Asians, because for some reason it's not considered discrimination if it affects them). It's not about doing the right thing, it's about PR - hence the decision to cave in to whatever the pitchforks are demanding.

It's a shame that honest criticism of diversity policies and gender issues is considered taboo enough to get someone fired. If we really cared about diversity, then we'd welcome opposing viewpoints and counter them with facts, not silencing. We have a culture of anti-intellectualism and dogmatism around certain topics that for whatever reason are considered sacred and not allowed to be challenged (ie. political correctness), and its disgraceful.

Relevant video: Peter Thiel: What is Multiculturalism Really About? [1996] https://youtu.be/E6cxRYgqfHY
This is one that really misses the mark. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says that the government can't persecute you for your speech, but Free Speech is a separate principle that says that we should allow a free forum for people to put out their thoughts.
My point is that not one of them described it in terms such as "shoddy" or "amateur", such as you did. None of them refutes any of the empirical claims he made. This stands in stark contrast to your interpretation of the memo.
In a separate thread I wrote this excerpt, which is related to what you are getting at:

We've always conflated moral leanings with truth.
Previously, "the truth" was right leaning; it is now left leaning. Unfortunately, many people find (and have always found) that all it takes to dismiss an opposing moral position is to point out that their opponent's position is untruthful, and the discussion (or lack thereof) ends there.
Frankly, I don't care. What I actually do care about are the people who suffered because one pompous twat thought he has right to put slatestarcodex-style blathering on an internal message board.
That's a good example that's a bit further back in the archive, but hopefully shouldn't be too hard to find due to how influential it was.

Probably better just to read the entire site, some really amazing posts there.
So essentially, passing Google's hiring bar is a lottery, and Google is giving out more tickets to diversity candidates?
> Sure, maybe he's saying that the bar for white/Asian men is higher than intended rather than that the bar for women and minorities is lower than intended, but you can't honestly argue that he isn't saying that women and minorities could be clearing a lower bar than white/Asian men.

This is not necessarily the case. This is a vast oversimplification of a tech company's hiring process, but for the sake of simplicity let's say that phone interviews have a 50% rate of generating a false negative and on-sites have a 0% error rate.

Say a company does one phone-interview, and if passed, moves on to on-sites. But for diverse candidates they do two phone interviews and if either passes they move on to on-sites.

* Unqualified candidates always fail, since neither phone interviews or on-sites have a false-positive rate.

* Qualified non-diverse candidates have a 50% chance of getting the job.

* Qualified diverse candidates have a 75% of getting the job.

At no point do any unqualified candidates receive offers. But at the same time, qualified non-diverse candidates are still rejected at twice the rate as diverse candidates.

The "bar" so to speak isn't always something that people have a higher chance of passing the better their skills are. A working knowledge of data structures and concurrency is all that's necessary to pass all of my company's coding interviews. Practice and luck is probably a greater asset than skill in many interviews. But getting into the efficacy of technical interviews is opening a whole 'nother bag of worms.
No they dont, which is one of the reason I work in Tech well outside of Silicon Valley... and have no intention of ever working in Silicon Valley. I would rather live under a bridge than work in that region...
It's strange how people who say that certain groups are inherently better at something are invariably a member of that group.

To put it more bluntly: it's strange that the people saying white men are just inherently better at stuff are always white men. Oh well, I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

When there are real, strong differences, usually a diverse group of people are willing to accept it. Plenty of women will tell you that men are better on average at lifting heavy objects or reaching the top shelf.

But ask about computer programming, and it's invariably the supposed "in" group saying they're better. What a strange coincidence.
I firmly believe hiring decision makers are incapable of assessing people objectively.
Right now, I do not feel safe discussing this subject. That is why I am asking how to safely discuss it.
The paper confused sex and gender badly. E.g. Man and male are not nearly equivalent groups. How could someone who thought so deeply about the subject miss that?
Apparently Google fired the person. Apparently Google can't say that it has lowered the bar, as it will be PR disaster.

"Google doesn't think it has lowered the bar" is implied, not apparent.
>Unless we have a reason to believe that false negatives are strongly correlated with the axis on which "the bar" is placed (and I don't think we do; false negatives are generally going to come from asking an out-of-left-field question, or the interviewee having a bad day, or something, which are pretty random), this doesn't lower the bar, "effectively" or otherwise.

I don't think that works. If the process is optimised for accuracy, then decreasing the false negative rate should increase the the false positive rate, right? Intuitively that's how it would work for most classification tasks. If you can decrease the false negative rate without increasing the false positive rate then you're improving accuracy. The bar must be correlated with the false negative rate.
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Surprised to see no mention of John Haidt and the "illiberal left" thus far.
One of those is a question of fact, the others are questions of how one should act.
Well, I'm not the least bit surprised - you don't just get to spam your colleague network with your non-work-related hot-button-topic nondeliverable and get anything productive out of it.

If he's actually interested in the topic of working towards better workplace diversity, he could read a book, write some papers, put together a panel discussion, organize a conference, make an educational video...
My Dad always told me there are three things you should not discuss at the dinner table: Politics, Religion and Gender Identity.
Calling your opposition Hitler makes you a pretty strong candidate for sympathy votes. You may not get Hitler assassinated, but you might just get a few programs through that much easier. Think about it.
It came from the alternative libertarian media 1-2 years ago.
> Anybody could tell you that a lot of people would be hurt by this document, regardless of its scientific merit.

This is a ridiculous statement. Scientific merit should be the only consideration when you are saying something you believe is important. If you're engaged in small-talk, go ahead and throw scientific accuracy out the window, but not in anything substantial.
I'm going to invoke Occam's razor here. Let's simplify diversity and just look at height. Let's assume men that are short and men that are tall are biologically equivalent, meaning biological trait that might surface are evenly distributed. Now let's inject 100 men with varying height into the general population, and... Uh oh there's a skew in leadership position and income. Taller men have better positions and have higher income.

People who are taller all have tall coworkers. They work for a boss that's a little bit taller than them. Some of them start thinking that you know this is probably just natural, men who are shorter are just biologically unsuited to be a leader. They aren't aggresive enough and they just don't have as much drive, it's probably just written in their DNA.

The short men no matter how much they perform or how brilliant they are always seem to be sidelined for promotion. Some of them make it pretty far but they're performing 50x compared to their peers, and theyre always sidelined when it comes to executive promotions. Other executives think: "this guy is brilliant but what would people think about us... We better promote the other less brilliant tall guy. We could retain investor confidence."
Some of them break out and try to start a company. They can't get any funding, and no one wants to join their company. People think its a company run by a short guy, this guy is brilliant but he's not going to do well in the long term, so they end up joining start ups that have tall guys.

This network effects over a million times.

Now let's take people's perception, and assume people perceive men and women exactly the same. The catch here is that women are one standard deviation shorter than men. Just from height you'll see a discrepancy between men and women representation in leadership positions.
Let's end height discrimination first.
I believe this is a simpler explanation of the discrepancies in representation.
Indeed, very funny :)
> people tend to choose more to their liking and "follow their passion"

Not to have a go at you personally but this is revealing of a highly middle class bubble that a lot of people are trying to reason from within (including that silly kid at google). It's like a moral and socio-political version of the Blub paradox. It's the same reason that it isn't possible to be racist against whites (in the West) or sexist against men, and why that is hard to understand if you are white or a man (you don't know you are in the privilege bubble and it seems inequitable).
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Thanks for the reference. You are right, if the ratio they want to achieve is close to the pool of candidates them I should apologize for my comment. But after reading the manifesto I think the ex-googler had the feeling the company was going out of limits and try to achieve an impossible.

Do you have any reference for the goal Google had for any of his programs?
What is the more sexist statement:

a) Men and women should be hired based on merit, and ability to perform required tasks.

b) Men and women are unable to compete based on merit and women need special consideration in order that equivalent number of men and women are hired.

The author of the manifesto was arguing for (a) and against (b).
It won't, however it won't go away either.
> illegally discriminating against other groups.

Affirmative action is legal in the United States.
there is no place in the world where you can do this.
All countries force you to hire "diversity" at a certain point.
There's a lot to be said about not using a throwaway account when advocating discrimination.
What makes you think success at high school is related to wealth? I've never noticed any such correlation. My family was not particularly wealthy and I did just fine in school.

You don't need any wealth to enter university. You just need to be smart and get good grades.

Family wealth plays no factor what so ever.
My sister had an acne breakout in her teen years and went on a brand-name hormone suppliment - it worked wonders. She went on the generic and only had problems - so far as I understand the situation the delivery mechanism is different across brands; though it's very rarely a problem for most people. As always, it's your health at stake - if you feel as though something is not working for you then switch.
The "scientific consensus" is that women are inherently genetically hard-coded to not be as good at or interested in computer programming?

Because... no. Nobody's demonstrated that. What people have demonstrated are small average differences in performance on certain kinds of test tasks, and then Google dude and you decide that's "scientific consensus" for whatever conclusions you'd like to draw from it.