Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sir_Cmpwn | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I'm surprised to see the comments here being hateful towards this statement. I don't think it's contradictory at all. The stance he takes is that any subject is up for debate, so long as you don't step out of line with respect to the code of conduct. The guy who was fired was way out of line, far beyond any reasonable limits to topics of discussion. Even as a particularly opinionated person myself, who would be likely to start a lot of shit at Google - even about diversity, I consider these limitations just.

View on HN

Not saying Google has to uphold everyone's 1A rights. Not saying dude who wrote the essay is correct either. But it's a lie to say Google's culture supports free speech when the cost of that speech is compliance with the tyranny of a Code of Conduct.

>But it's a lie to say Google's culture supports free speech when the cost of that speech is compliance with the tyranny of a Code of Conduct.

I think people often expect 'free speech' in situations where I wouldn't. Like a collaborative working environment where you are all professionals trying to get work done. There is a subset of speech (so no longer 'free') that is appropriate for working professionally with a group, especially a group from widely diverse backgrounds. The exact boundaries change over time and between environments, but the idea of employers setting a baseline set of elections expectations inherently limits speech. Google supports speech within limits, and a person who gets that could probably have navigated the politics of talking about the legitimate issues in the memo without crossing that line. Working together in companies is weird. Codes of Conduct attempt to standardize expectations so that work can get done. Work is a special place.

Your argument seems to be that in an work environment opinions should be kept to one's self. Would that apply only to Republicans or to Democrats as well?

It is an utopia to pretend that the workplace should be opinion-free. Especially since the workplace on purpose tries to blur the lines between personal and professional lives: dorms on campus, cafeteria, malls and dry-cleaning amenities on campus.

If that's the direction business are going towards to then it is normal to accept that the employee comes with opinions attached.

Generally I think people who are basically compelled to spend time together should use company policies, and their own judgement, to figure out what's professionally acceptable in context and work in reference to that. I don't agree with how home/work lines are often blurred and I see nothing wrong with opinions being shared at work, except the naive expectation that one has the right to say anything at all and, if it's "just an opinion", experience no consequences. It's just basic professionalism. In the real world outside of work, people can express all ranges of opinions (well, most), and others can choose to react, or not. Others can even choose to just not deal with you if they don't like your opinion (again, mostly). At work, you have a complicated long term contractual and financial relationship to the employer and other employees. It's appropriate for people to come into that with some self awareness and caution about what to say, and to whom.

> Not saying Google has to uphold everyone's 1A rights.

What rights? The guarantee that the government will not interfere with your free speech? This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment.

> It's a lie to say Google's culture supports free speech when the cost of that speech is compliance with the tyranny of a Code of Conduct.

The memo made it clear that diversity of opinion is welcome right up to the point where it violates the CoC, but not beyond that point - if you violate the CoC - you can and will get fired. It even listed which parts of the memo would have been ok.

I've never heard of a company that places some sort of altruist dedication to free speech as a higher priority than their internal code of conduct. Google's position on this is industry standard, protects Google from lawsuits, and protects Google employees from harassment. How is that bad?

> The guy who was fired was way out of line, far beyond any reasonable limits to topics of discussion.

What did the author say that was "out of line"? Can you please cite a section of the essay and explain?

Note: Please see this response to the memo from four scientists who study the field of psychology: http://archive.is/z6xxP

The reason given by Google for the author's termination was "advancing harmful gender stereotypes". I didn't see any evidence in the memo of "advancing harmful gender stereotypes". Where are the stereotypes? Where's the evidence that they're harmful? Is the author really advancing them? The author appears to be referencing scientific research into the topics that he mentioned. Scientific research into sex differences is not "harmful stereotypes".

The way in which the Google CEO's reply is worded gives me the impression that they don't even understand that the author's claims are scientific ones. For example:

> 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.”

These terms -- agreeableness, neurotic -- are personality traits in the field of psychology. There is a significant amount of research into how men and women differ in these traits. See Wikipedia for sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism#Sex_differences

> This paper investigates gender differences in personality traits, both at the level of the Big Five and at the sublevel of two aspects within each Big Five domain. Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

The author's mention of terms like "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" are statements of personality trait trends established by scientific research, not personal views or stereotypes. The message from Google's CEO seems to interpret them as personal insults, thereby missing the point of the essay.

The original memo raises points like: women tend to have higher neuroticism on average (low stress tolerance) than men. If some tech jobs have high stress, then is it possible fewer women than men seek those jobs? That seems like a reasonable question to explore, to me, and a question that's grounded in existing scientific research, not the promulgation of a stereotype.

The author also cited other research such as "Women, careers, and work-life preferences": https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2011/SPP457/um/23632422/Hakim...

A lot of what he said was on-point and I agree with it. However, it also puts forth a lot of inappropriate generalizations, and in many places presents absurdisms as valid points. I think his "manifesto" would have been a lot more compelling and less divisive if he had presented it much differently.

SUCH AS?

Jesus Christ.

He boils down the sides do absurd minimal values that understandably cause offense. He calls the people the "left" support as "weak" and says the left worldview prefers an "unstable" approach.

He jumps directly into generalizations about men and women. THe subject has hardly been breached at this point and he's already stirring discomfort among any readers for whom his generalizations do not hold.

He says that women have a harder time negotiating for salary et al as part of their inherent nature.

He directly states that women are neurotic and indirectly states that women cannot handle high-stress work. These terms were called "scientific" by the parent comment, but so is "retarded", and calling someone a retard is pretty fucking rude.

I empathise with the idea that men are being marginalized in order to accomodate for others. Supressing the views of conservatives is equally troubling and worth addressing. Many of his other points hold as well. But he goes too far and throws a rotten egg into the whole document.

"Support of the weak" and "neurotic" are being used in their technical sense though, as rough axes upon which people can lie. It's not normative, it's descriptive.

I don't really know if your #3 is true or not (this isn't the hill I die on), but I don't think it's heresy to suggest it might be. Is that really so impossible as to be an absurdism?

Obviously some of the things he's saying are generalization, but that's hardly a coherent criticism in this context - everything we're talking about on this topic is, by its very nature, generalization. We're saying fewer women than men take jobs in the computer science sector _in general_. If you're trying to look at broad trends it's okay to talk about averages. Real scientists don't need to preface every single statistic with a huge preamble reminding the reader that individual samples are not the same thing as the distribution they are drawn from.

The silly thing is I actually agree that this was a useless move to try and 'educate' the whole company. But saying he was being unscientific is garbage. He's being perfectly coherent and scientific, it was just a fairly rude thing to blast out to a company as large as Google.

The use of these "technical" terms may be appropriate if it were presented in a different context. There are several examples of this document definitely being inappropriate (ones you did not refute), which exacerbates what could otherwise be benine use of technical terminology. To the reader who's already seen several remarks out of line, remarks like "nerotic" seem that much worse.

A perfectly choerent and scientific paper would include references for the points it tries to make. Many people have tried to retroactively justify his "points" with links to Wikipedia articles, but it should be proactively justified in the document with links to scholarly articles. Not doing so makes it difficult to believe that he's writing about anything other than his own cognative biases. "Real" scientists also go through peer review, when their peers might say "this makes you come across like a bit of a dick" before it's published for broader review. "Real scientists" have lots more discipline than this guy, and if he had taken a "real" scientist's approach he would have probably been a lot better off.

Examples please

I realize this is a touchy topic, but people keep echoing a similar sentiment about inappropriate generalizations.

However, I read the original document the (now ex-) Googler wrote and from what I can see he presented his claims in a reasonable and carefully worded manner. Many people seem to be misquoting him or taking it out of context.

Could you please provide example(s) of these inappropriate generalizations? I am curious if I am misreading the original text, or if you are perceiving it from a perspective that I cannot see (in which case, it would be nice to understand where you're coming from).

It makes points that children can be upset about, adults need to learn to have discussions. Even on topics that they think are sensitive.

If they can't do that, maybe they shouldn't even have a "grown-up" job.

And to throw my 2cents in here too, I'm a biological scientist and agree with the overall theme of what the guy wrote (though there are a handful of smaller points within the manifesto that I take issue with).

You clearly have an axe to grind, since you've posted the same links and research at three times in this comment chain. Every single time you leave out this quote, also from the first article:

>But it is not clear to me how such sex differences are relevant to the Google workplace. And even if sex differences in negative emotionality were relevant to occupational performance (e.g., not being able to handle stressful assignments), the size of these negative emotion sex differences is not very large (typically, ranging between “small” to “moderate” in statistical effect size terminology; accounting for less than 10% of the variance). So, using someone’s biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality would be like operating with an axe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com