skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"diversity" and "inclusion" often go hand in hand. Throw in some "unconscious bias" training, and you begin marching down a path. I think it's something only time and a diverse gene pool will heal. Relevance to the job is a key thing, as simple as it sounds. You always want "the best", and in tech, that often means "people like me", which necessarily means "not people like them", and we find ourselves where we are today.

It's a journey.
I think you should cite references. It will make your point stronger and I want to read them!
People seem to have an intuitive sense of punching up/down. There's an intuitive sense of abuse of power, and an allowance for people without power to use tactics which we'd abhor if those in power used.

The idea "well, no one can punch!" is rhetorically clean, but pragmatically problematic. There is a long history of people who had to punch up to break a ceiling that should never have existed.
Thanks for pointing that out. I see now (seems HN needs some kind of quote formatting).
Would you rather get a job on the merits at an insurance agency's IT department, or be a diversity hire at Google?

It's nice to say "I'd prefer to be hired at Google on my merits", but few individuals from disadvantaged groups go into job seeking expecting that ideal situation to occur, and they're forced to make suboptimal tradeoffs just because they're disadvantaged.
the field of diversity

uh? What? What is that? Define 'diversity.'
United didn't have system rules in place to flag this because they are just incompetent.

I could definitely see some junior dev writing "if (isNameBrand()) { lookForGenerics(); }", even if the requirements doc was less specific and just said "look for lower-cost alternatives". Catching that sort of extraneous assumption is one of the things that comes with experience.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/15/...

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
FoS so far as the U.S. Constitution defines it has nothing to do with society. It's all about government.
He doesn't assert the differences are due to inferiority. The vast majority of differences he mentions are differences of taste not differences of ability. There are many studies that show that women are more prevalent in engineering in poor countries than in rich ones. One fairly prevalent hypothesis to explain this data is that economic freedom allows people to pursue what makes them happier, rather than what makes them the most money. I have no idea if this hypothesis is right, but I think it's pretty sad that one can't make a case for it without getting fired.
LOL. Trump supporters are totally fair game in the valley.
>To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made.

That's exactly my point.

Replace "brainteaser" with "being an underrepresented minority" and you'll see why it's absurd to suggest his manifesto is tantamount to saying "some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired".
We have plenty of good open source alternatives now. qTorrent works fine
I don't think the two types of travel are mutually exclusive, and you can certainly mix them both into one trip. Spend some time helping orphans, then go to the beach. That's actually what a lot of people do.
My intention in replying to your comment was to praise you on your well-written argument. Agree or disagree, it's extremely well crafted!

When the Reply page opened, I discovered at least one person had voted your comment down... rather ironic, that.
Consumer hardware is notriously busted. Even most of the enterprise hardware isn't flawless. Firmware bugs etc. "Your hardware is actively trying to kill your data and ZFS job is to prevent it." To paraphrase Allan Jude.
Well, if women really make 87% of what men make for the same work (or whatever the latest number is), it could save the company 13% or more on car insur- I mean, labor costs.
I'm not saying people shouldn't discuss company policies. I'm saying they shouldn't turn those policy discussions into a national/cultural political argument.

If you say "interviewers are being sexist and so we should adopt policy Y", I think that would be acceptable. If you said "there is systemic bias against women so you should vote for Hillary Clinton", to me that would not be acceptable. Once you turn something into left/right liberal/conservative etc you are harming rational discussion and making a lot of trouble in a lot of different ways.

And I think this is the solution that the person who wrote the letter is ironically ruining. You can't have sane level headed discussions about these issues when its framed as left/right. You can if you take every issue on its merits individually. If you want people to be free to voice conservative opinions, then don't turn every issue into a 10 page manifesto dissecting the failures of marxism. Just discuss the policy.

No idea if this reasoning is shared by Google though. It's just my view.
The weirdest thing is watching what happens when one group thinks they're punching up, and everyone else thinks they're punching down.

You see massive disconnects.
That's generally my point.
That's a good thing! Then Alphabet is doing a good job, and someone should have sat down with this particular employee to explain what controls are in place to ensure consistent hiring standards are enforced while being sensitive to the requirements of people from different backgrounds. This was not the case at the company I worked for and it was a very negative thing.

> Then maybe you should just not make that assumption and work with them as a peer?

Sorry, forgot to mention that I'm a human in my post.
The reason you are not seeing this is that the problem is too hard for and language is very complex.

There are Banks that would pay Millions if somebody could extract business relations between companies. It would probably be enough in a fist step to know what a company name is an see if 2 turn up in a sentence. The author is asking for something that looks even harder to me. First identify book titles. And then identify a recommendation. I think machine learners like to play with images, because training is easy (recapture). But how should they go an tag book contents for recommendations. It takes much more time than identifying vehicles or traffic signs and requires more education.

Before analyzing something like that there will other things be done. Like work on the structure of sentences (who interacts). Or if some statement has a positive or negative tone.
I use multiple addresses in this block for local DNS servers, both authoritative and recursive, and various local proxies. Alternatively I can clone tap devices and assign them RFC 1918 addresses. However the loopback works better in my experience.

As an end user, I use /etc/hosts not only as a substitute for DNS but also in addition to it.

For example I may block/redirect a mostly noxious domain via wildcard in a customized root zone file on computer1 (an "authoritative nameserver" for a "recursive cache" that serves computer2) but then edit the HOSTS file on computer2 to make an impromptu single exception for a particular subdomain. Ideally I would prefer to run local DNS and local proxies on computer2 like computer1, but with many of today's "computers" this is infeasible; so computer2 might use computer1 for name lookups, routing, etc., as suggested by another commenter.

There are other ways to make these adjustments but editing a text file that is always present and in the same location is quick and dirty, immediate and particularly easy. This is only one use. HOSTS is quite useful in a variety of situations.

IMHO, the use of local computer1 as a gateway/server for another such as local computer2 only becomes even more important as we see a rise in "computers" that are resistant to manual control by the end user, such as those mentioned by another commenter.

Without having the ability to do IP forwarding, packet filtering, run localhost DNS servers and localhost proxies, as an end user I would struggle to control the internet traffic[1] of many of today's "computers" where the manufacturers have preconfigured them to serve their own interests and attempted to lock users out from making changes.

1. e.g., ad blocking, disabling incessant phone home behavior and other bandwidth conservation measures

In short, I need to be able to control the address for "localhost" without relying on or having to worry about DNS. HOSTS achieves that without the complexity and politics of DNS.
Modern day Nazi's may use biological differences as a sort of ideological fuel to further their despicable cause, but to lay that sort of intention behind the memo author is also despicable. The nazis should not be able to deter a society from looking at science from an objective viewpoint, that is something everyone would suffer from.
The problem with punching up (a revolution, an insurrection, whathaveyou) is that it's indiscriminate. At its worst it's a collective group against an individual rather than indiv-vs-indiv or group-vs-group.

So, while it looks like punching up, having a group "punch up" at someone is actually punching down at an indiv.
I applaud your goals with your community, and wish more game developers and game-adjacent companies would think similarly. I've worked on games that didn't care, or didn't put the effort in, and so ended up with fairly toxic communities. When I was at Runic Games, I was amazed to see how inclusive and positive a gaming community around the Torchlight series was, but it definitely took work from the very beginning to make it that way.
This is ridiculous. He was doing little more than opening a conversation. But since this was against the agenda, he was fired. People still wonder why Trump won, and I can't think of a better example.
>> You're not lowering your standards for women, but you're raising your standards for men, and then employees might notice and form the impression that the average male employee is better than the average female employee, which would be unfortunate.

No process is ever random. All processes have side effects, that make some kind of memory/feed back loop.

If there are two groups of uniform set of people A and B. And you if make it harder for A to succeed. Set of people in A will have to work way harder, than set B over very long periods of time to win consistently. You will end up making A far more stronger than B. While your intention was to make B at least as good as A over time, you have now achieved the very exact opposite of what you set out of achieve.

This is common in sports, and even competitive exams. Candidates are trained to take on difficult problems than the baseline so that they can get better than the baseline.

At this point the bar for winning is largely to subject to interpretation. Did you raise the bar for A, or did you decrease the bar for B? It depends on what you consider the baseline.
The "social factors" argument is pretty much bullshit, but even if it weren't, the claim I rebutted was that women are being prevented from entering the field. Nebulous social pressures don't meaningfully constitute prevention. "My parents put the video games in my brother's room so I became a lawyer instead of an engineer". Come on.

Edit: "social convention" shouldn't rule--women should be free to choose whatever careers they like, even if they're preferences are shaped by a culture you and Google distain, and men should get a fair shot at the employment they want, also irrespective of Google's identity ideology.
I hold the principle of open-mindedness higher because I personally don't see a downside to it. Closed-mindedness always struck me as a symptom of insecurity. Being insecure about something like the criminality of child sexual exploitation doesn't sound like something I ever want to espouse, so if you want to tell me why you think it's a good idea, I'll listen (the likely outcome being the conclusion that you're a whacko, and moving on).

Being open-minded doesn't mean I'll sit still while someone endlessly or facetiously justifies an objectionable notion. If I've heard it before, or it's insincere, I'll dismiss it outright, as I imagine you would.

But on principle, I'll listen to an earnest attempt to demonstrate the merit of anything, even something I'd otherwise categorically reject. You might not influence my position in the slightest, but being open-minded doesn't mean easily persuaded, either. It just means being willing to incorporate new information or ideas in your decision-making process.
As I explained to another poster just now: this guy painted a target on himself by becoming a huge liability for Alphabet. By stating that he's OK with discriminating by gender, he put them in a position where they'd have to flag him as someone who couldn't manage a mixed-gender team. Not only that, he should never be allowed to give peer reviews to people in mixed-gender teams. Not only that, he's obviously created animosity with other people inside the company who said they wouldn't want to work with him.

Just deleting the post won't magically fix those issues.
Fundraiser for Google's fired employee, author of controversial diversity memo
If you want to argue about tax policy, military policy, or any number of other things where conservatives and liberals have legitimate policy disagreements then by all means do so. I'm sure Google is a perfectly safe space for such arguments.

You seem to be arguing that we need to create a safe space for conservatives to espouse debunked bio-truth garbage that women or blacks are less suited to being engineers or are somehow inferior. Or that conservatives should have "safe fact-free zone" where they can spout nonsense without having anyone call them on it.

I'm not sure why so many people are willing to take this Google engineer's statements at face value. Actually I think I know why: because it confirms pre-existing beliefs. But even an hour on Google will provide ample evidence that his premises are simply not true. I'm not taking about J. Random Engineer's ramblings on some blog but actual research undertaken by actual sociologists performing experiments and crunching reams and reams of data.

Let me repeat that for everyone: His entire argument is based in a long-debunked flawed premise. It isn't true and no amount of philosophizing about it will make it true. Your feelings don't make it true. The facts are clear. Counter-examples about: look at CS enrollment rates in India for example. The modern western world, especially the United States, socializes women out of computer science and software engineering. It has nothing to do with biological aptitude.

Everyone I know of is desperately trying to find qualified candidates to hire. The idea that more-qualified white men are being excluded to fill a "diversity" quota is laughable. Diversity is about expanding the candidate pipeline and providing some support to those people once hired. Maybe if the industry goes through a huge crunch and programmers are being laid-off left and right then there would be an argument there?

The other thing I'll say is you have to be extremely dense not to either a) understand that you're making extraordinary claims or b) touching a potentially controversial topic that could result in massive bad PR if nothing else. Under those circumstances a competent engineer should take some time to gather evidence and make proper citations to peer-reviewed research. It would also be greatly beneficial to present multiple sides to the argument and make fewer sweeping claims. If you're going to say something that could easily be interpreted as "my coworkers are less-qualified diversity hires" then approach the topic with some humility, especially if you don't have a PhD in sociology.

This would be the equivalent of penning a memo claiming people who believe in God are suffering delusions and they are lowering the bar because they go to church on Sunday or for special events when they could be working. Mention that they're obviously gullible and represent a security risk to other employees. Go ahead - write that memo and route it around a large employer. See if you're still employed a week later (hint: you won't be).
Then why is "every second" a "huge claim" and "every nanosecond" "even a bigger claim"?
Until we take away our own biases, the "extra points" for under-represented minorities have to stay.

The example is: Your internal bias is already in effect before you even meet the people you are interviewing. You're only disgusted and aware of the explicit handicap example from your boss.
Firms face £17m fine if they fail to protect against hackers
Except, to establish that it is somehow a biological difference, he would have to rule out cultural bias. Otherwise he's falling back on pseudoscience to justify his position. And, the facts have repeatedly shown that cultural bias is keeping women and minorities out of tech.

As an example, I could present a graph showing that most Italians are Catholic and argue that it shows a genetic predisposition. But, such an argument would clearly be absurd.
Just asserting "CRCs are useless" is putting a lot of trust on stuff that has real-world failure modes.

Yes, and he does this over and over again throughout the article. I have personally experienced at least 3 scenarios that he has determined won't happen.

If this guy wrote a filesystem (something that he pretends to have enough experience to critique), it would be an unreliable unusable piece of crap.
> men felt exactly the same way about their job - but more women had the freedom to take action and leave the job.

Is there a simple explanation of the year award trophy I can nominate you for?

Maybe our field just sucks a bit more than we like to admit. Women find it easier to take the family route and possibly make a career change post child rearing, while poor Dilbert with his Y chromosome is stuck with the pointy haired boss. Maybe the gender gap problem is caused by a more universal set of problems that irritate everyone.

Of course for women take all the problems of tech and add sexual harassment. Not only does the PHB waste your time and make dumb decisions and force you to implement them but then he comes over and rubs your shoulders and talks about how much fun the swinger lifestyle can be.
California is an at-will state. They won't be able to fire you for participating on a Trump rally or donating to Hillary Clinton, but sure as hell they can fire you for creating a hostile workplace, which is what this guy did.
Cool, was it a video course or some ebook?

How did you do the marketing?
Interviews (by design!) simulate intense interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee, similar to a workplace situation when trying to solve a problem. That setup is not objective.

The result, even just the code itself, is also not judged on a binary yes/no scale, which again leaves a lot of room for opinions and bias to muddy the water.

I've done hundreds of engineering interviews. Conducting objective interviews is very hard. Anybody thinking they are objective either has never done interviews or is fooling themselves.
Forget Unit Tests, Only Fast Tests Matter
While he's right that it's not as big an issue as ZFS fanatics make it out to be, it _is_ a real issue and they're not just pulling it out their asses. There are a number of studies that actually measured the error rate, some of the bigger ones being done by CERN [0], NetApp [1] and IA (I think there's meant to be a talk or something to go with this one) [2].

ZFS certainly isn't a magic wand you should wave at anything and everything and it doesn't replace backups but it does make the chances of something going wrong undetected much smaller and even though the chances are small to begin with, there are times when you just can't accept it at all.

[0]: https://www.nsc.liu.se/lcsc2007/presentations/LCSC_2007-kele...

[1]: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast08/tech/full_papers...

[2]: http://storageconference.us/2006/Presentations/39rWFlagg.pdf
You misread my post. I was criticizing the ridiculous rationalization: "his views aren't just wing, they're toxic". The punch line is that this line of reasoning is indistinguishable from a witch-hunt. "I don't like views that I don't like and those who expose them shouldn't be tolerated!"
"Mr. Damore, who worked on infrastructure for Google’s search product, said he believed that the company’s actions were illegal and that he would “likely be pursuing legal action.”

“I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does,” Mr. Damore said."

The guy apparently has decided to cleverly game the system and get $$$ settlement from Google.
as a liberal i find that it is important to not shy away
from controversy: women and men are biologically different.
i am sorry, but they are.

That you felt the need to apologize for a statement that is so blatantly obvious even a small child could see it is telling. I understand why you did and find myself doing similar things. It's pitiful.

Unfortunately, your pre-emptive apology for recognizing the obvious won't save you from the mob - those whose minds are so rotted and aloof they insist everyone indulge their fantasy because they can't cope with reality. Feelings, safe spaces, groupthink, and all that.
I was referring to gender norms for women + systemic bias against women as patriarchy. You are right, nobody wrote that explicitly, I just don't want to write a wall of text :) Hence the /society part.
Yep. That definitely happens. Individuals become totems of their group, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly.

But it's near impossible for a collective group of people to perfectly balance their outrage in just the right way, at precisely the right people, for exactly the right amount of time.

We just accept the tradeoff that progress is messy.
Generational Garbage Collection and the Radioactive Decay Model [pdf]
Singing uses different neural pathways... sometimes people with speech impacted by a stroke or other injury can actually sing well.

People stutter for different reasons. I had some traumatic bullying when I was in 4-5th grade and developed a severe shyness and stutter as a result. The big switch for me was when a drama teacher encouraged me to look at the foreheads of the audience and focus on the line. Eventually your brain figures out that everybody isn't out there waiting to laugh at your expense and in my case I never stuttered again.
First Nations in Western Canada would deliberately set fire to areas. There is a very old tradition of having "fire keepers" who were responsible for burning areas and ensuring that it was done safely. Traditional wisdom was that every part of the forest should be burned at least every hundred years. Here's[0] an interesting article from the CBC on the topic.

[0]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fire-fighting...
It might. If weightlifting counts for 50% of your total "score" and some hypothetical "worthy" metric (such as coding) counts for 50%, someone scoring a 5/5 on weightlifting but only a 3/5 on coding would have a higher total score than a person who scored 1/5 on weightlifting and 5/5 on coding.

The first guy is not necessarily "unqualified", but he would relative to the other guy. People who were hired for their weightlifting abilities wouldn't have had to reach a higher score on coding in order to get hired. So on average, you would expect them to be less qualified.
It's time to stop spending taxpayer money on Elon Musk
No, tulip mania wasn't even close: 5,000× returns [1]. More successful investments are easy to find, eg. someone pointed out in another thread that the founders seed round of Uber generated 65,000× returns.

[1] The all-time record sale seems to have been about a bulb selling for 5,200 guilders ( http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/12/when-certain... ); and the pre-bubble price of tulip bulbs was about ~1 guilder each.