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Comment by alexwebb2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand how firing him is controversial.

He wrote a pathetic, juvenile manifesto that served only to reinforce and perpetuate gender stereotypes. To me, that absolutely falls under the umbrella of "creating a hostile work environment". He'd be a major liability if they _didn't_ fire him.

Companies are under no obligation to allow their employees to distribute their own ill-conceived manifestos that slam the company for its policies and promote a sexist view of the world. That's insane.

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How was the memo pathetic or juvenile? He sourced all of his claims and himself has a Ph.D in Biology. What gender stereotypes did he perpetuate? In fact he specifically called against stereotypes.

It sounds like you didn't read the memo at all and only bought in coverage by fake news sites like Gizmodo.

Yes, the term Fake News actually applies here.

I did read the memo. It was extremely juvenile, and reminded me of the racist drivel that gets pushed on Facebook. Mixed into the stats he cites is a whole lot of hand waving and unsound conclusions, and it's clearly meant to push a sexist viewpoint.

Ok, can you be more specific about which parts you find to be racist or juvenile? I have read the memo as well and I have found it to be civil and well written and did not see anywhere it pushed for some kind of sexist discriminatory agenda.

Where do you think he did hand waving? Which conclusions of his do you think was unsound? Which particular statements of his you think was clearly meant to push a sexist viewpoint?

And your vague replies are meant to paint him in a corner and shut down all discourse on this subject. So...

Technically, he started doing his PhD but quit 2 years later.

Not only that, but his work was in molecular biology.

> He sourced all of his claims

He didn't actually cite anything, though [1]. He used a bunch of bracketed numbers [2] to look scientistic, but didn't actually provide [3] substantive evidence [5,7,8,6,5,4,3]

Also, I can "source all my claims" and vehemently defend the Nazis. "Source your claims" is the middle school grammar teacher equivalent of "provide substantive evidence and use careful language when writing publicly on sensitive issues". In other words, kinda juvenile.

FWIW I don't think people should be fired for political beliefs, but the actual memo wasn't "well-sourced" and was the author was clearly trolling. I've heard the whole "google is a utopia" thing, but I can't imagine posting something like that in a work context even in the most liberal office environment...

> and himself has a Ph.D in Biology

IMO this makes the whole thing much more embarrassing for the author [9].

[1] If by "cite" you mean provide evidence.

[2] It is perfectly OK to use bracketed numbers for footnotes as well as citations, of course. But footnotes are not citations.

[3] If you're going to appeal to authority, at least actually appeal to an authority other than "additional ramblings.

[4-8] Don't dare disagree!

[9] Especially copious footnotes presented in a way that implies they're citations.

[10] There's some PG essay about this.

>He didn't actually cite anything, though [1]. He used a bunch of bracketed numbers [2] to look scientistic, but didn't actually provide [3] substantive evidence [5,7,8,6,5,4,3]

What are you talking about? He absolutely linked to all his citations, the fake news Gizmodo stripped out all of his citations/links and graphs when they published the memo.

Here is the full memo with all the links preserved: https://diversitymemo.com/

Considering it was the body text of the memo, and someone probably just copy/pasted it into an e-mail, I think what Gizmodo published was less fake than to call it "fake news."

There was a memo. Gizmodo thought they had the full text. They actually only had the body text. That's pretty darn close.

That is a blatant lie. Gizmodo explicitly stated that they stripped references and diagrams:

"Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted." [1]

[1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/exclusive-heres-the-full-...

Okay, so your argument is that it's "fake news" because Gizmodo nefariously stripped hyperlinks while openly telling everybody about it? Or was that note added later?

I still think it's clearly attributable to ignorance rather than malice because presenting the text of a document is not uncommon to do; the fact that it changed the tone of the memo is unfortunate, but doesn't make the news "fake"

I read the full memo; the use of these things [1] is exactly as I describe.

> He absolutely linked to all his citations

Aside from non-sourced footnotes, the "sources" are for the most part hyperlinks to wikipedia articles, news articles, and position papers.

These aren't sources. Source substantiate claims. A list of people who agree with you is not a "source".

Also, the ACTUAL CLAIM -- that the set of uncontroversial differences between the sexes can explain gender disparity in tech -- IS entirely unsourced.

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