skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Those persistent data structures are implemented in Clojure aren't they? It's not a feature of the compiler I believe. So if it can run Clojure code then that code can be the persistent data structures library if you want.
Usually those are vague enough to where they can axe you for nearly anything no?
I haven't read the memo but I have read some summaries of it. Even before the memo was released I had a negative opinion of it. Not because someone spoke out their mind but because someone decided to just go and shout out their obviously controversial beliefs to the world expecting for his ideas to be taken seriously and for there to be no negative consequences.

If you want people to care about what you think and have to say, you need to spend time and effort cultivating a positive reputation. Otherwise you just seem like an unhinged idiot.

edit: because people seem to be misunderstanding my point or simply downvoting me because I am describing a reality which makes them uncomfortable I will simply reference Douglas Crockford and the Nodevember debacle.

If what occurred to Crockford occurred to some no name software engineer do you believe there would have been the outpouring of support and articles defending his character? No the person would have likely been fired for no good reason and had their name splashed across a bunch of tech blogs as a sexist.
They're probably ready for the lawsuit and will settle with a few millions and will get done with it.

I used to work at Google and this makes me sad. The fact that you could make fun of Larry Page in memegen was my favorite attribute of that company.
Look into structured notes. You can get some gains with sort of an insurance policy.
Ah, you're completely right - great point. What a horrible story. :(
I saw a flash of it once. I was in the middle of vagabonding in the philippines (Cebu) where breakfast on the corner was $1 and a private room $15/night. I got a contract for 8hrs at $120/hr = $960.

So I rented a desk for $10 overnight (EST hours) and billed the hours after 2 nights.

In Cebu, $960/month is more than enough to live comfortably. So I realized I made an entire months living (traveling) expenses in one day of work. That's almost like the "2 hour work week"
i have a college degree i know how sentences are supposed to be capitalized lol
He's a good man. I'm sorry to hear google is such a hypocritical company. They preach "tolerance" and yet destroy those who fall out of line from their ideology. They'd make great commies. As for James, I'm sure he'll be able to find a better job. There are still a lot of people in this country with their heads on right.

I think I'm going to go as google free as possible now. What's the best alternative to Gmail?
Could they not have done that before?
"it’s solitary-work turtles all the way down"

Exactly.
>> I think if you take a population that has been the subject of generations of systemic government oppression, remove it (allegedly), and then declare "fairness accomplished! You are free to complete on a level playing field! Pay no attention to the effects of generational poverty!" you are on real dubious ground.

Equality of outcomes enforced by excluding certain racial groups creates intergenerational systemic government oppression of the excluded groups. Again the goal and the means are contradictory.

The socially acceptable way to increase participation by a perceived underrepresented group is to target that group with sustained improvement programs with measurable outcomes. This is the only serious way to address the problem. The opportunities are there but talent with proper skills is not.

>> This would also presuppose that we have successfully eliminated systemic racism from our society, which is... an argument that would require substantial supporting evidence.

The burden of proof is on the accuser to prove that 'society' is in fact guilty of 'systemic racism'. The presumption of Innocence until proven guilty is a cornerstone of western law. Whey you have an indictment of 'society' in a court of law then we can have a fruitful discussion of 'societal systemic racism'.

>> And with respect to the whole "taking of jobs", I will add a more comprehensively researched rebuttal to my own anecdotal experience: if you're good, you're in no danger of getting caught up in a quota system. Competent white folks are doing just fine. The less-competent.... probably should cowboy up. As my exploited millennials would say: "git gud".

Once again your presenting a contradiction. You want to argue that 'systemic racism', for instance against blacks is a horrible injustice. But also claim that other racial groups such as whites are being excluded because there is a racially discriminatory quota system, but you have no problem with that.

So what I gather from your post is that you support racism as long as its against Whites and Asians.

And you also think that its perfectly fine to remove 'less-competent' people as long as they are White or Asian and replace then with presumably even 'less-competent' black people?
On a related note, what does "internal memo" mean here? Did he forward this to a few coworkers who spread it or cc the whole company or what?
Something tells me that, in this, "software engineer" probably doesn't mean the same thing it did in my university.

What would a person with a degree in CS (or related) get from this program? Honest question.
Unless the Google contract departs from boilerplate California employment contracts in ways highly disadvantageous to one of the largest, most legally savvy firms in the state, it is unlikely that Google needs a documented reason to fire anybody, so long as they aren't retaliating against them for concrete protected concerted actions in labor organization or retaliating against them for defending their rights as a protected class under federal law.

Doubtless a real lawyer will come along here and clarify, but a good shorthand is: you can be fired in virtually any state in the union for expressing political opinions.
One less white male on the team, diversity needle is moving in the right direction.
fired from a tech company for "perpetuating gender stereotypes"...

What in the world is happening right now? This is absurd beyond reason.
Welp thats it folks, Google is no longer the cool company it once was. Now its like any other big bureaucratic public corporation.
Good. I get that HN is not into this, but this employee stated, bluntly, that they don't believe many of their colleagues should be there because of their sex. Every peer review, every no-hire, every interaction, is and should be suspect.

Happy where I am now, but future interviews will include me asking what management would do about this, and termination is the only correct answer. This is textbook hostile environment. Anyone saying otherwise should look hard at why they value this person's desire to speak without consequence over their colleague's right to a workplace where they're not judged by their sex, race, sexual orientation, or any other innate attribute irrelevant to their job performance.
For basically all intents and purposes, every state the US is an at-will state, with very narrow exceptions in a few states few tech people work in.
FICO alternative
Is that how much you could get if you are aiming to getting close to 100% occupancy?
Oh, so stating that women can't handle stress is bad now? Political correctness gone, uh, sane.

Edit: I had hoped the sarcasm was obvious
> Our co-workers shouldn't have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being "agreeable" rather than "assertive," showing a "lower stress tolerance," or being "neurotic."

Ugh, this is not okay. It is almost certain the author meant "agreeable" and "neurotic" as two of Big Five personality traits (others being open, conscientious, extraverted), this is standard terminology in psychology. And it is indeed established that women score higher on agreeableness and neuroticism, across cultures.

I'd think the right conclusion to draw is that Google should be a great place to work even if you are agreeable and neurotic (alternative wording would be sensitive). Instead, Pichai implies Google is not a great place to work if you are agreeable or sensitive, and denies science that women are more agreeable and sensitive. Denying reality is useless.
Already mature discussion about the issue here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948857
Your condition isn't special. Everyone who stutters doesn't when they are alone. Neurologically, it's a defect in processing external feedback to what we are saying. If no one is listening, there is no feedback.
There is no reason for an employee to be concerned about who their employer hires as long as said companies are operating within the framework of law. This is none of your business literally.

Google is currently under investigation for pay disparity and are obliged to review everything and ensure there is no sexism at play. If you don't like this surely you should challenge the laws that demand this of Google.

Sending a memo on diversity or any political issue is an aggressive political action in the workplace that can only have one outcome. The context for debates and action about merit and diversity is in the legal democratic space not the office.

This individual is not a victim of free speech but of indiscretion.
Yep, after reading the public response provided by Google's new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance (https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...) I was pretty sure this was all that was left.

Regardless of whether you agreed with the letter or not, it's 100% correct in asserting that it's super difficult to have productive, rational conversations about the issue of diversity. Google just reinforced that fact.
Like I said, I'm not a financial wizard, so I'm mostly in cash and I've missed some upside. Not completely, have a pile of Apple stock that's done well, but I'm not the right guy to be managing money. So I've moved most of it to a guy at Morgan Stanley that a friend has been using for a long time.
Fun fact: the author of the memo earned a PhD in Biology from Harvard. Google can fire him and get away with it, but it's going to be tough, very tough, for him to be falsely characterized as someone who is misinformed or unscientific. And the court of public opinion may well be more important in this controversy than any court of law.
Perhaps them not realising that is why they behave in such a way. The whole thing is getting utterly bizarre though.
Complicit of what? Wrongthink?
"Even before the memo was released I had a negative opinion of it."

That's a problem. I read the whole thing and was annoyed that TechDirt cut the charts and the references.
Bad ideas often get funding and support from prestigious seeming institutions. Look at the stupid waterseer thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsqIjAeeXw
> Would I have consensual sex with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Sure.

Would you proclaim that at the time of marriage vows? No. (so the whole idea of marriage is either a hypocrisy or a joke).

Would you proclaim that when your recent date asks if it's time to go steady? No. (so the whole idea of monogamous relationship is either a hypocrisy or a joke).

And the very idea that you have celebrity crushes while you claim you're in love with someone flies in the face of the idea of love.

I'm not saying what you think is immoral. All I'm saying is this whole thing is a big make-believe, an arcane circus that we like to play our whole lives, when the alternative is quite simple: just admit the reality that it's way more superficial and increasingly more and more useless than what the society would like you to believe.

> Would I fall in love with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Well, no...

You completely missed my point.
Exploration versus Exploitation: Deciding When to Get Married - http://www.inference.vc/my_big_fat_data_driven_wedding_how_t...
Obama's openness and transparency? haha.
Yes. Where I live it would be impossible to rent this place for 6 nights/week at $138/night.
How do we know that he expected no negative consequences?
Waaaaay too high. Probably by an order of magnitude.
The author's arguments have been completely misrepresented. He pointed out widely-believed and sometimes scientifically-established differences in the DISTRIBUTION OF traits in men and women. He said that those differences make attempts to achieve numerical parity misguided, discriminatory, and harmful. What is his conclusion about how we should behave? "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group." Wow, what a monster.

The reaction to the memo is really the most damning thing about the whole affair. Everyone is just rushing to virtue signal, to demonstrate their own purity of thought. They've just proved the author's point. Honestly, Google might have even been rational to fire him, due to the toxic situation created by the mass outrage. How incredibly damning of our society.

A particular brand of liberalism has reached the point of being a religion, and the establishment is running an inquisition against any who dare to question its points of dogma.

This is the closing of the American mind.
Yes, I'm sure one of the wealthiest companies with some of the best-compensated employees in the world will make terrific communists.
You can't cultivate a positive reputation and express controversial beliefs
This is not a workable argument against firing someone. If it were, all you'd have to do is say, "We have too much group-think here," followed by any egregiously awful statement, and you'd be insulated from consequences. That's just not how these things work.

I think any good argument against firing him has to hinge on the truth of what he said besides the group-think claims. Regrettably for him, I don't think there's much to most of it.
It is interesting how aggressively people cite science to back their politics (on both "sides"). IQ distribution by gender is inconclusive. There is structurally valid and statistically significant science backing a higher beta normal distribution for male IQ than female IQ. There are similar studies attempting and failing to reproduce this. I think this is an issue like whether caffiene is healthy (or does it cause cancer? both?). Confounding is strong here (men do more school? are smarter? hormones? DNA? patriarchy? all of them?). I support this because it challenges the irrational tone on diversity of genetics. Why is that better? Isn't diversity of thought better? Are our thoughts simply a product of our skin colour and gender? What does that say about free will or moral development? About progress itself? Don't discriminate, don't hire based on gender or skin colour, do understand the science, don't take anything considered progress at face value, do question everything, don't allow people to bully you for your opinion, do assume that people will judge your actions instead of your intentions, do risk being fired for what you believe, don't be surprised when you get fired.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
... and now I'm getting downvotes after answering the OP's question earnestly trying to provide the opposing viewpoint ...
You can't express vast generalizations that are stereotypes and expect the rest of us to feel comfortable working with you.
Yes because we should hire people based off the colour of their skin or current gender status!
I see nothing of the sort in his original document. Could you add some quotes to back up your claim?
My favorite example are a few simple-seeming polynomials with integer solutions. (Equations that we want to solve for integers are called "Diophantene equations".)

Here's one that's genuinely easy:

x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = 29

The solution is x = 1, y = 1, z = 3 (or any permutation thereof).

So how about this one?

x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = 30

Play around a bit.

Not so easy.

But it does have a solution!

Here it is:

x = -283059965

y = -2218888517

z = 2220422932

And what about x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = 33? There is no known solution. It's an open problem!

This is a great visceral demonstration that Diophantene equations are hard: there can exist no algorithm that solves all of them. Diophantene equations, like the Halting Problem, are undecidable.
> this employee stated, bluntly, that they don't believe many of their colleagues should be there because of their sex

Did you read the essay? He certainly did not make that claim. Population averages are not statements about individuals. This is pure censorship.
Stories say it was intentionally spread in large public forums.
No it's not a problem. I didn't have a negative opinion of it because of the content (which contained no new or interesting ideas by the way). I had a negative opinion of it because someone out there believed that you could just shout out your controversial beliefs in a group email and expect something positive to come from it.
I don't really think this situation is all that unusual, but it's something people don't bring up because it causes the reactions like the parent.
I make it a point to talk to a stranger at least once a day. The person in line in front of me, the barista, store clerk, whomever. It has helped me tremendously. Meditation is also great.
This isn't an issue of "fashion" or "opinion". It's an issue of whether the guy is right or wrong, and if he's wrong[1] whether or not he's caused damage to his employer[2], and if that is true whether it is a firing offense[3].

You don't get to avoid discussion[4] about those subtitled points by retreating to some kind of invented safe space here. Out with it. Is he right?

[1] He is.

[2] He has.

[3] It is.

[4] Yeah, I'm just asserting without evidence too. But only
to avoid the pointless flames that result.
I did not get that meaning from reading the memo. And I really don't understand how anyone could. Could you point out the part in the memo where he stated bluntly that many of his colleagues shouldn't be there because of their sex?
Ask HN: The Bitcoin adoption paradox
Am I right in seeing a sort of paradox in the adoption of Bitcoin as it exists today?

There is a finite supply of Bitcoin, and mining speed of new Bitcoins is reducing all the time. Hence as more people buy into Bitcoin, the value tends to increase, since there’s more money in the system and less Bitcoin to go around.

Let’s say Bitcoin takes off in the real world and various merchants start accepting it.

Since Bitcoin is useful now, more people buy in. But since more people are always buying in and the total pool is limited, the value continues to go up. The more merchants support Bitcoin, the more people adopt Bitcoin, and the more valuable it becomes. The more the value continues to increase, the less people want to spend it. Why spend a dollar if it’ll be worth $2 tomorrow?

The more useful it becomes, the better it is to not use it.
No, it will be very easy. Don't mention his training in any articles, and 95%+ of the readership will not look into his qualifications or training.
I never thought Jeff Dean jokes would be a shibboleth but here we are.
All Googleers .. need to watch what they say, watch what they do. - paraphrasing Ari Fleischer, Bush's press secretary, after 9/11.
I just can't understand how people think that you can regulate sex between consenting adults. Did we not learn anything from prohibition? Trying to make something that almost everyone wants illegal is just not possible. Hell, we can't even enforce a speed limit on the highways.
So are you saying if he were a woman or minority it'd have been easier to get hired and he'd have a stronger wrongful termination suit?
You aren't supposed to start with expressing controversial beliefs.
Doesn't a policy of preferentially hiring certain groups necessarily imply that employees who are part of those groups are less capable? Like, helping folks pass the bar implies that they aren't above it - otherwise, why would they need help?
Applying the notion of "moral fashion" to this doesn't seem appropriate. It also shows a certain blindness to the problems of sexism and racism especially in the context of this former employee's comments.
Lol denying reality to support your fantasy is pretty lame too
I guess Google is no longer the "cool" progressive company it once was. Sad how all big corporations are steered into the same actions.

I'm trying to figure out where the next best place to work is going to be.
He's implicitly claiming some of them shouldn't be there, or he believes that miraculously every single women at Google clears the bar for desirable traits in a programming without affirmative action.

Come on now, which one do you think he believes? He made it pretty clear, clear enough that pretty much no one would want to work with the dude.
Perhaps more important (for Google, at least) is to be compliant with employment law, than to allow "rational conversations about the issue of diversity."
If you haven't read it you shouldn't critique its content.
The essay was a honeypot, and you all took the bait
I don't know where everyone is reading their versions of the letter, but I don't think you could read the Gizmodo reprint and misrepresent the argument:

https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...

This is where I read up on it, and the letter was written very reasonably, IMO. That article also includes a response from google's brand new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance.

[EDIT] - original (as pointed out by the commenter below) is here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideo...

Read that instead
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952333
"Why it may be illegal for Google to punish that engineer over his now viral memo (cnbc.com)"
So you're going to ask management what they are going to do about someone who is stating well accepted scientific facts [1]?

I hope we never become colleagues.

[1]http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
Oh, as you are on Hacker News, it means you probably don't have the genetic make up to understand an issue like this.
I don't think you've thought this through.

Maybe read the article and other informed commentary such as this ex-Googler: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
I would argue that it's more akin to picking a fight in a bar— you're liable to get kicked out just for making trouble.
> "Treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group." Wow, what a monster.

The problem is that Google already does do this, for the most part. So what does it mean to say that Google ought to treat people as individuals, if that is already the current state of affairs? The argument, as coded in the document, was that Google ought to cease making any efforts to correct disparities in representation.

As a moral or rational argument, this falls flat on its face. Suppose that there was science to show that cognitive differences between men and women or different races is 100% inborn (there isn't, not even close). Even then, there's still the problem of whether the magnitude of those differences justifies the magnitude of differences in representation. There is not nearly enough data to make a case here, and by presenting the case as made, the author of the doc was doing more than just observing the state of the science. He was making an unsubstantiated claim that his coworkers, or at a minimum the sex and/or races they belong to, are inherently deficient at performing the work.
Posted on Google's private Google+ instance (which is very active). Pretty much like sharing it on an internal mailing list, or on Slack.

Seems like it must have gotten a few reshares to go viral enough for somebody to feel the need to leak it. I don't think we really know how widely it was read before it leaked though -- it might have been a big raging controversy inside Google, or it might not.