skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I blame the accountants. When the one handed over to the other it should have been handled by the "professionals" instead of being left to chance.
Oh no, no, not at all.

These are not scientifically verifiable facts. Actually, I take that back. His broad claims can be scientifically demonstrated as false.

I encourage you to pause and read this:

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

If that doesn't explain things, then I don't know what will. I hope it provides better context - whether we agree or not.
These kinds of surveys are worthless. Who cares what the 99.999% of laypersons think about anything?
That would make it a different statement which may we'll have a different truth value
Amazingly, we have an experiment that shows that this is not the case, if you make some pretty reasonable assumptions. It's based on Bell's theorem. Your statement is very intuitive, and the fact that it may be wrong is very surprising.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem#Bell_inequa...

EDIT: tone.
I get what you're going for here but this isn't really a case where it makes sense to draw equivalence to text editors, tabs vs spaces, etc. This isn't a matter of taste or habit - it's a matter of discriminating against people based on the gender marker on their birth certificate or the color of their skin.
The biology is so radically different. You can't and shouldn't replace "men and women" with "different skin color" as the argument would be changed.

Men and women DO have different biological make ups, and there are detectable and measurable changes in statistical behavioral at large sample sizes. That's ok.

I don't condone hiring, firing, etc based on this information. And I do think diversity hiring is a good thing, as it pays dividends that go further than pure ability. Ideation is more powerful when diverse viewpoints and backgrounds are present, for example.

I think the author of the memo was wrong, but you can't de-construct his argument like this to subsequently claim an obvious moral authority.
> If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of that program means those women wouldn't have gotten those jobs.

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 men. Because you have to hire women as the diversity program says.

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)
> I do not falsely equate attempts to deny people fair civil rights (as the modern GOP does routinely, in terms of race, gender, gender identity, and so many other ways) as “opinion” so much as institutionalized violence

The issue is that the left equates denying preferential treatment
as 'denying people civil rights'. That makes it close to impossible for liberal-minded and conservative-minded folks to debate many topics.

> Whether the transgender/nonbinary people I know have the right to exist or not is not subject to debate.

Right to exist? Is someone saying they should all be rounded up and persecuted?

> Whether women have the right to participate fully in the economy without facing harassment or discrimination just because they are women is not subject to debate.

Another instance of the first point. Who's saying they shouldn't? Again, the other side wants the same thing--they simply disagree with means to achieve it. But you happen think those means are 'sanctioning violence' against them.

And...'sanctioning violence' against women? What does that even mean? Who is doing this?

The left always tends to fall back on this argument of 'basic human rights' as if the sky is falling because the right wants to take them all away & punish anyone who isn't a straight white male.

It's just a ludicrous mindset that, again, makes it almost impossible to have a rational debate. The nonsensical language in your comment makes that clear.
Or coming from a progressive view point at all. It may be coming from a business perspective of "this drama is bad for business."
Fair enough, and I appreciate that point of view.

But, and this is important: you don't have any power.

People that are tolerant and acceptable are not the vocal minority. And those in power either agree with the SJW vocal minority, or they are afraid to oppose them.

So what I said above still stands unless their is some concerted effort to change these types of policies and expectations that result in what happened in this scenario.

Now, most people wont write a company wide memo outlining their "controversial" views because they have too strong of a self-preservation instinct.

What I'm pointing out is... are people going to get sick of holding back, keeping their thoughts to themselves, lying so as to avoid judgement. I bet there's a massive amount of readers just on this site that completely disagree with the outcome in this instance.

But they are irrelevant. Because nobody will do anything about it, and the next person to speak up will get fired also. So... nice tolerant open-minded liberals have no power in the face of motivated passionate regressive SJW liberals.
There is a strong difference between supporting their right to speak their opinions and supporting their opinions. By voting for those candidates and if you have supported the party, you have supported their opinions, not just their right to share them.

This comes down to your views on a single question: do you have to be tolerant of opinions or actions that harm others? Right now, I think most progressives say no, conservatives obviously say yes. That is the actual gray area this comes down to.

This is an exaggeration, but it illustrates the argument of the left:
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/223/669/6bc...

It should also be noted that the US constitution is being used very out of context here. The US constitution guarantees you the right to say what you want. It does not protect you from the repercussions of your speech, which is what is harming the livelihoods you cite. Whether that is moral is a valid debate, but misusing the constitution here is a broken crutch for the argument. The right has made common use of misusing the constitution, most recently in their abandonment of "states rights" during the current administration.
I have definitely had multiple refunds done on steam easily.
Did you just equate "non-progressives" with "racists and sexists"?
Political affiliation is a protected class and you are protected from workplace discrimination based on your affiliation.
The Real Captain Crunch
Depends on the physicist. Those working on foundations of quantum mechanics do. There just aren't many of them.
How portable is your laptop if you can't use it for more than 30 minutes without an electrical socket? A quarter pound is an insignificant amount of weight. Most people would probably quickly get used to having to carry around 5 extra pounds of weight in their daily bag/backpack/whatever. Also, there is a massive range of computing power between "I can barely use gmail because my browser is laggy" and needing a compute cluster; and a massive difference between being able to perform your daily computing tasks smoothly vs. with noticeable lag that adds friction to everything you try to do. Your dichotomies are false and hyperbolic.

I think a significant proportion of people who are even moderate computer users would prefer increased battery life and snappy performance at the expense of a slightly bulkier laptop.
Read the party's official platform sometime, or maybe just a few tweets from the president.
No. He says that genetically-influenced behavioral traits which are observable in aggregate across genders may lead women/men to respond differently to different work environments. Then he suggests a few ways Google can promote diversity without discriminating against anyone.

His facts aren't even controversial to anyone who knows the science at this point. Google has basically shown themselves as anti-science and evil.
Considering he was just fired, why would anyone speak up in support of it?
You're right, that's an important difference. However, it doesn't alter the core point about the chilling effect this particular ideology is having. Could you honestly say that someone expressing an equally divisive statement that was in agreement with progressive dogma would be fired? If someone argued in favour of refraining from hiring straight white men until sufficient diversity had been achieved, do you think Google would have fired them?
> I think "right to free speech" is a weak and kind of scary argument to be making here. Inside a corporation, you don't have the same right to free speech you would have on the outside. HR can fire employees for things that wouldn't get you arrested for saying in public.

It's an argument that certainly makes a lot of sense from a libertarian perspective. But those of us on the left have already dismissed similar arguments - we know that when private commercial entities are sufficiently powerful, the limitations that they impose on their employees, customers etc can be so strong that they cannot be unchallenged (see the entire history of workers' rights movement, basically). We consider this immoral, and advocate for various limitations on the ability of businesses to do whatever they want.

If free speech is a public good, then why shouldn't the same standard be applied to it? I'm not even talking about legal aspects here, but purely the ethical side of things - shouldn't we at least condemn a situation where an entire industry effectively suppresses some opinions using its economic levers (employment among them)?

And if it's not considered a public good, then that should be explicitly stated, because that used to be one of the pretty basic tenets of liberalism.
Amber Heard and Elon Musk Broke Up After a Year of Dating
Physical harm requires an action, whether legislative or physical. Words don't ipso-facto lead to actions and not all actions lead to atrocities.

An opinion does not cause physical harm.

This is the error with political correctness- as precisely defined-- it is the idea that you must be politically correct, otherwise you're causing a moral wrong.

I don't think this can be justified rigorously. But it is taken as an article of faith, almost, among its adherents.

From my perspective, it is used as a tool to control, by moving the overton window to exclude areas of thought that are different, and to rationalize actual actions that cause damage. (Firing someone isn't an atrocity, but it is harm.)

So, ironically you're advocating doing the harm you're using as justification to defend your ideology.
Driving people out of a job is a far cry from jailing them.
“The company was founded under the principles of freedom of expression, diversity, inclusiveness and science-based thinking,”

Clearly, this is either not entirely correct, or they have "evolved"
You're highlighting another big problem these days, slavish reverence for the 'best schools'.

I will also get a PhD from Harvard, and from a more selective program than this person. Yet I recognize the limits of my knowledge.

Studying microbes [1] does not give you the standing to discuss sociology. If your very well-qualified dentist wanted to do a code review of your last commit, you might think twice before accepting his advice - namely, you would ask what special knowledge he has, besides being a generally smart individual.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Damore%20JA%5BAuth...
Um, so? I censor myself at work every single day. If I routinely said some of the not so polite things that I sometimes think about my colleagues and (especially) customers I'd be fired. This is called "playing nice with others" and I learned it as a child.

I also sometimes think about topics that would be inappropriate in an office environment (such as sex) and I censor myself by not saying what I am thinking. We even have an Internetism for that concept - NSFW.

None of this is new - we are expected to conduct ourselves appropriately for the current situation. It's just how society works.

I didn't even read the document in question, I just have a very hard time with people getting riled up about being "censored" at work. It's work, what exactly do you expect?
> This comes down to your views on a single question: do you have to be tolerant of opinions or actions that harm others?

The debate and argument of ideas is non-negotiable if we desire a free society.

EDIT: I choose to be tolerant of ideas that may be abhorrent or cause harm, because the alternative is much worse.
Freedom of speech protects you from government persecution, not social stigma.
If you really think those programs are ineffective, you need to roll out a superior solution before you suggest throwing them all away. Otherwise you're just pulling the rope up behind you because you're already in the treehouse, and you can sit there and continue to wring your hands over the poor state of things.
True but they just can't impose received knowledge the way an authoritarian regime could.

There are advantages to having absolute power over people. But the disadvantages (corruption and despotism, for example) are too great.
I have two friends who did, independently. I surely doubt that they are still running things as they did way back then. But, at the time, and for almost a decade afterward, it enabled them to travel freely around the globe and have a relatively luxurious lifestyle.

Interestingly, both eventually got married and settled down back in the states. They each seem to be doing well - but have more conventional lifestyles now (i.e. Living in the burbs with kids).
Reading the letter, what surprised me was how political it was, framing everything as a "left vs right" cultural fight. I think if it was up to me I'd probably fire anybody on either side of that debate who started circulating shit like this. As soon as you're on that level, nothing good is going to come of it and you're just going to make a lot of people angry, which is very bad for the business in a lot of different ways.

The workplace is no place for politics like this. If you are going to strictly stick to narrow issues that are relevant to the job, then maybe, but as soon as you're writing a 10 page manifesto with phrases like "the Left's affinity for those it sees as weak" or "some on the Right deny science" or "the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics" you are way out of line. It doesn't matter if you are correct or not, politicising your workplace in that way shows a stunning lack of judgement.
I've noticed in third world countries more women go to STEM than in the west. It's probably because of economic or social pressure. There's also no culture of "following your passion"; instead people follow what they think will give them a good career.

There's less economic or social pressure in the west so people tend to choose more to their liking and "follow their passion".
If you're going to assert a scientific consensus, my friend, you're going to have to cite one.
The analogy doesn't hold, emacser heathen deserve neither support nor sympathy for their choice of "editor."
I believe that PG makes a very interesting point in Hackers and Painters saying that one shouldn't discuss about whether something is sexist, racist or offensive but rather just whether it is accurate or not.
> We witch hunt people who play at Gor in their spare time.

Fuck that noise. Larry Garfield was asked to step down because his Gorean activities leaked into Drupal events and that made others feel unwelcome.
That's theoretically the benefit of at will. But that benefit is asymmetric - a company won't hardly notice one persons leaving, but a person's life will be unduly burdened by being fired with no warning or cause.
Apologies that I did not include "financially cripple/impoverish" in my list.
> I support bigots and misogynists speaking their opinions because its a right enumerated by the US constitution.

I support bigots and misogynists speaking their opinions too.

I do not support tech companies that hire smart people continuing to employ people that argue for substantial changes in policy based on nonexistent science and personal feelings. It is not "political correctness" that gets someone fired for failing to test a change before deploying it in production and breaking the site; it is a lack of critical thinking skills. The memo displayed a lack of critical thinking skills.

If you try to claim that individuals in a free society should be averse to taking someone's opinions and words into account when deciding whether to associate with that person, you are essentially saying that opinions and words don't matter. That's a far greater threat to free speech than government censorship is. An oppressive government can be overthrown, subversive publications can be made, end-to-end encryption can get ideas across, etc. But a society that believes that opinions are of no consequence has lost all hope. It is not the government-enforced dystopia of 1984 but the self-imposed dystopia of Fahrenheit 451.
I come from a legal background so pardon my argument. I don't mean to offend.

I do agree with you, if in fact that was the authors intent. The issue you bring up is a good one though. Did he believe that he would throw away his influence and ruin his life by sharing this opinion? That's very tough to prove one way or the other. It entirely depends on the circumstances surrounding why he wrote the memo. If he did so entirely on his own without being asked or provoked, then you are right. If he was asked to write the memo by a superior or someone in perceived authority, you may be partially correct. If he was led to believe his opinion would be valued and his reputation kept and protected, then you are quite wrong. Unfortunately, I don't believe we will ever know the truth. So this interesting academic exercise will never really come to a conclusion.

Now, on the other hand. A thorough reading of the source would indicate that he should know that essentially saying that Google is biased against privileged individuals (say, white, male software engineers) is a pretty hard position to defend and he was foolish for attempting the argument. But hindsight is 20/20.
And telling how quickly this post got flagged off the front page.
In particular, people's evaluation of a company are not (wholly) based on its current annual output, whereas the GDP is exactly the amalgam of all companies' output. People evaluate a company at least in part on the assets it holds, intellectual property, and future earning power, none of which are captured by the GDP.
Just because something is protected as free speech under the constitution doesn't mean that you won't get fired for it. If you went around saying "my boss is an an idiot and all my coworkers are incompetent", you might get fired. Would this be a violation of your constitutional rights?

Really, this point is unbelievably obvious. Do you also go around crusading for the rights of foul mouthed mechanics and surly waiters who get fired for their speech?
That post is only a personal opinion based on his own bias and prejudices without any scientific reference. Moreover it make claims about the article that the author hasn't made.
Seems accurate, might be better to consider current rating, amenities, etc.
United States law classifies specific forms of speech as illegal, in some cases because they incite violence. There's obviously an objective difference between saying 'you should go murder that guy' and twisting the knife yourself but it's pointlessly reductive to act as if all speech is harmless or fully equivalent.
http://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/
It was a bit of a Jerry Maguire moment even if you agree with some of it.

At work you should be professional and not only work to make yourself and the company/product better, but the people around you better.

It is mostly not healthy to get political or ideological at work unless you want to divide people. A company and employees really shouldn't get political if at all possible, to prevent a divided customer base. You should treat everyone at work like a client and not go all tribal or into cliques that end up in groups that are constantly complaining.

If you don't like something you can work to change it but in a company the size of Google that is not always possible. If you don't like the ideology of a company then leave. Do a good job yourself, setup your own thing if you want to control everything, but don't bring down other individuals, encourage them and make them better, create respect internally. Don't rock the boat, try to guide it, if you can't, hop on a new ship. In the end we live in a free country but work for companies that are more dictatorial/authoritarian where we are just sharecroppers on their feudal land. Companies are not democracies unless they are really small and even then they are not.

Sometimes manifestos are needed [1] but for the most part it is like calling out an employer. Not only will it probably not change the company, it will follow you around for better or worse.

Oh, there’s one final lesson: you never know when something you write is going to unexpectedly be published in the Wall Street Journal. So watch those split infinitives.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/what-i-got-wrong-in-the-peanu...
For example when two parties are interested in making a deal, but don't want to reveal it unless the other party is interested as well. (The example is usually a date, but it could be applicable to voting or other situations where both privacy and unanimity are desired.)

By performing a homomorphically encrypted computation, they can set it up to only reveal the final decision, but not the individual inputs that determined it, so nobody loses face.
I meant on the internal thread this memo was released to and discussed on.

I heard from a indirect source that it blew up partially because others agreed with the sentiment. Just wondering if there could be confirmation on that.
The Project Management Institute and their certification process has led to a situation where project management is seen as a domain-agnostic discipline. As a result, many certified project managers know little about the domains they are managing. Furthermore, coming from the construction industry, many of the traditional project management processes and thought is linear and waterfall in nature. They have taken steps to adopt agile and iterative processes in the past few years, but bear great legacy costs when it comes to applying project management to technology projects (where many projects fail for a variety of reasons).
Who is voting this off the front page?
Copy-on-Write
>If this person posted it on his facebook page the result would likely be the same.

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas.

Also, wasn't Eich CEO? Different standard there.
The difference is which direction the energy is flowing. In sailing, you're extracting wind energy into kenetic energy. In drafting, you're expending energy from some other source to overcome the resistance of the air you're displacing to maintain your kinetic energy.