928 Climate of fear: Google sacks employee who blamed lack of gender diversity on 'biological causes'

Climate of fear: Google sacks employee who blamed lack of gender
diversity on  'biological causes'

Newsletter published on 13 August 2017

(1) Climate of fear at Google - employees who challenge leftist
narratives on diversity
(2) Google fires employee who blamed lack of gender diversity on
'biological causes'
(3) Google "inclusive environment" has no room for Traditionalists
(4) Google Anti-Diversity Manifesto Author Identified And Fired
(5) James Damore: "This Is Why I Was Fired By Google"
(6) Why I Was Fired by Google - James Damore
(7) It may be illegal for Google to punish James Damore
(8) Text of  James Damore's Anti-Diversity screed at Google

(1) Climate of fear at Google - employees who challenge leftist
narratives on diversity

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/the-google-rebels-diversity-first-technology-second/

Rebels of Google: ‘Senior Leaders Focus on Diversity First and
Technology Second’

by ALLUM BOKHARI7 Aug 20174,984

Over the weekend, Google was rocked by the publication of an internal
manifesto that alleged wide-ranging political bias within the company.
In exclusive interviews with Breitbart News, more Google employees are
now speaking out.

The 10-page manifesto, which was met by an immediate backlash, described
a climate of fear at the company, in which employees who challenged
prevailing leftist narratives on diversity were faced with immediate
threats to their career.

Breitbart News is now exclusively publishing a series of interviews with
Google employees who contacted us in the wake of the manifesto’s
publication to confirm its allegations.

The interview series, entitled "Rebels of Google," will be published in
full over the coming days. Because every employee who spoke to us fears
for their job if their identities were made public, we have provided
aliases in place of their real names.

In the first interview of the series, a Google employee (alias "Hal")
speaks of witch-hunts and intolerance at Google, as well as dysfunction
at the company’s upper echelons.

Hal began the interview with a statement about Google:

Hal: Witch hunts are a well-known cultural problem at Google. The
company is currently facing a Federal complaint filed by the National
Labor Relations Board in April for interfering with employees’ legal
right to discuss "workplace diversity and social justice initiatives."
The complaint alleges that Senior Vice President Urs Holzle and numerous
managers in his organization actively stoked up witch hunts in 2015 and
2016 intended to muzzle low-level employees who raised concerns about
the company’s practices. The trial is set for November.

Several managers have openly admitted to keeping blacklists of the
employees in question, and preventing them from seeking work at other
companies. There have been numerous cases in which social justice
activists coordinated attempts to sabotage other employees’ performance
reviews for expressing a different opinion. These have been raised to
the Senior VP level, with no action taken whatsoever.

Allum Bokhari: What’s it like to work in such an environment? Do you
think it damages employee output?

Hal: A lot of social justice activists essentially spend all day
fighting the culture war, and get nothing done. The company has made it
a point to hire more people like this. The diversity gospel has been
woven into nearly everything the company does, to the point where senior
leaders focus on diversity first and technology second. The companywide
"Google Insider" emails used to talk about cool new tech, but now
they’re entirely about social justice initiatives. Likewise, the weekly
all-hands "TGIF" meetings used to focus on tech, but now they’re split
about 50/50 between tech and identity politics signaling.

For conservative employees, this is obviously demoralizing, but it is
also dangerous. Several have been driven out of the company or fired
outright for sharing a dissenting view. Others have had their promotions
denied or suffered other forms of deniable retaliation. Most of us just
keep our heads down because we can’t afford to lose our jobs.

AB: Have there been any stand-out moments of intolerance at Google?
Anything that particularly sticks in your memory?

Hal: There have been a number of massive witch hunts where hundreds of
SJWs mobilize across the corporate intranet to punish somebody who
defied the Narrative. The first one I remember is when Kelly Ellis made
unfounded allegations of sexual harassment against her former manager,
and Google terminated the manager in response to the internal SJW
outrage. This was similar in intensity to the current witch hunt. Anyone
who sympathized with the manager’s plight or asked for any sort of due
process was "counseled" by HR and told that they were creating a hostile
workplace for women and minorities by sticking up for a harasser.

In another witch hunt, an employee raised concerns that the affirmative
action policy (which gives strong preference to women and minorities)
could be seen as discriminating against white males. SJWs trawled
through his ancient posting history from four years prior, found a stray
comment to take out of context, and burned him at the stake for it.

AB: Have you heard similar stories from people in other tech companies?

Hal: I have heard two similar stories from Facebook.

AB: Do you fear for your job?

Hal: I didn’t even write the document, but I always fear for my job and
operate with the expectation that I will be purged unless something
changes. Talking to reporters is incredibly dangerous on its own, much
less talking to Breitbart. And the tolerance for "microaggressions"
keeps getting lower, to the point where everybody is walking on
eggshells because they don’t want to be publicly shamed in next week’s
Yes-At-Google.

AB: Your concerns about intolerance towards employees at Google mirror
the concerns of ordinary web users about intolerance towards them. Many
people now fear that Google, Facebook, and other companies are moving to
control and censor their content. Are these fears justified?

Hal: That is absolutely what Google is trying to do. The pro-censorship
voices are very loud, and they have the management’s ear. The
anti-censorship people are afraid of retaliation, and people are afraid
to openly support them because everyone in their management chain is
constantly signaling their allegiance to far-left ideology. Our
leadership (Sundar in particular) is weak, so he capitulates to the
meanest bullies on the block.

This article is part of the "Rebels of Google" series.

(2) Google fires employee who blamed lack of gender diversity on
'biological causes'

http://mashable.com/2017/08/11/james-damore-google-rebuttal

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-08/google-employee-behind-anti-diversity-memo-fired/8785596

Google fires employee who blamed lack of gender diversity on 'biological
causes' Posted about 2 hours ago

Google has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo that ascribed
gender inequality in the technology industry to biological differences.

Male engineer James Damore's widely shared memo, titled Google's
Ideological Echo Chamber, criticised Google for pushing mentoring and
diversity programs and for "alienating conservatives".

"Distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in
part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership," he
wrote last week.

He also wrote women "prefer jobs in social and artistic areas" while
more men "may like coding because it requires systemising", in the the
memo which gained attention online over the weekend and was shared on
the tech blog Gizmodo.

Google's leadership responded by slamming the statement.

"Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in
their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make
them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK."
-Sundar Pichai

"Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in
their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make
them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK."
-Sundar Pichai

Chief executive officer Sundar Pichai said he was cutting short a
holiday to hold a town hall meeting with staff and denounced the memo in
an email, saying portions of it "violate our code of conduct and cross
the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace".

In a note to staff, he said: "Our job is to build great products for
users that make a difference in their lives".

"To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less
biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK," he wrote. And
Google's just-hired head of diversity, Danielle Brown, responded with
her own memo, saying Google is "unequivocal in our belief that diversity
and inclusion are critical to our success".

She said the engineer's essay "advanced incorrect assumptions about
gender", and added that change was hard and "often uncomfortable".

In an email to Reuters this week, Mr Damore confirmed he had been
dismissed, saying he had been fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes".

He said he was exploring legal options.

Google said it could not talk about individual employee cases.

Silicon Valley suffering gender divide glitch

The battling messages come as Silicon Valley grapples with accusations
of sexism and discrimination.

Google is also in the midst of a Department of Labor investigation into
whether it pays women less than men, while Uber's chief executive
officer recently lost his job amid accusations of widespread sexual
harassment and discrimination.

Leading tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, have said
they are trying to improve hiring and working conditions for women, but
diversity numbers are barely changing.

(3) Google "inclusive environment" has no room for Traditionalists
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-google-memo-and-the-new-blacklisting/20179

The Google memo and the new blacklisting

Sean Collins

When did it become acceptable to sack someone for expressing an opinion?

9 August 2017

Google’s campus is a playground: employees ride multicoloured bikes,
play volleyball and walk dogs in the bright California sunshine. But
this week we learned it’s not all fun and games at Google.

In an internal memo that went viral, software engineer James Damore
accused Google of being an ‘ideological echo chamber’, a place where you
cannot openly discuss issues such as the company’s approach to
diversity. ‘As soon as we start to moralise an issue’ like diversity, he
wrote, we ‘dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish
those we see as villains to protect the "victims"’. And as if determined
to prove his point, Google fired him for saying so.

Google’s sacking of Damore matters not only because the tech giant is so
well-known, and has been accused of sexist hiring practices (31 percent
of its employees are women). It resonates with wider society because it
suggests that there is only one ‘correct’ view on certain topics, like
diversity, and that if you dare to question the ‘correct’ line you
should be punished. Indeed, it has been striking to see that so many,
including self-described progressives, rushed to denounce Damore’s memo
and applaud Google for wielding the axe.

The memo, which has been described as an ‘anti-diversity screed’, is
neither anti-diversity nor a screed. ‘I value diversity and inclusion,
am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes’,
Damore writes. His tone is measured, and he references academic
research. But he goes on to reach two conclusions that some find
disagreeable, if not offensive. First, that ‘differences in
distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we
don’t have 50 per cent representation of women in tech and leadership’.
And second, that ‘discrimination to reach equal representation is
unfair, divisive, and bad for business’.

Since the news of the memo broke, much media space has been devoted to
disputing Damore’s arguments, and calling him a biological determinist
and a sexist. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, justified the firing on the
grounds that he advanced ‘harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace’.
Maybe some of these criticisms are valid. Maybe Damore’s
amateur-psychology ponderings miss the mark. But whether his theories
are right or wrong is really beside the point. The real question is:
must such views be silenced, and must someone lose their livelihood for
uttering them?

It seems that Damore naively took Google at its word when the company
said it welcomed discussion. Many accounts, including Dave Eggers’
Google-inspired novel The Circle, suggest that employees view the
company as an extension of university life, a place where ideas can be
debated (even the office park is called a ‘campus’). Movies like The
Internship would have us believe that Google hires quirky misfits, even
older dude-bros (like the characters played by Vince Vaughn and Owen
Wilson), who think differently.

The reality, as we are now glimpsing, is that Google is just like other
companies: it doesn’t really welcome free expression, and it doesn’t
like to be criticised. That doesn’t mean that Google is ready to discard
its claims to openness. In the midst of explaining to employees why he
fired Damore, Pichai asserted that ‘we strongly support the right of
Googlers to express themselves’. But presumably only if they express
agreement with Google.

Damore was also naïve in not realising that challenging diversity could
get him sacked. It is an especially sensitive issue at Google, at a time
when its pay practices are under investigation by the US government.
American companies like Google are also subject to the Justice
Department’s broad definition of sexual harassment as ‘activity which
creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment for
members of one sex’, which encourages them to tread carefully in this area.

But the thought restrictions around diversity are driven by more than
the legal environment. Corporations have embraced diversity – usually
now referred to as ‘diversity and inclusion’ – as central to their
missions and values. It is how many companies claim to define ‘who they
are’. They struggle to find intrinsic purpose related to the products or
services they provide, and so have promoted diversity goals with the
hope of gaining some moral authority by reference to wider social
objectives.

Therefore, by poking at diversity, Damore was questioning corporates’
self-definition, something they really don’t want examined too closely.
Diversity is not a matter up for intellectual debate in Google and
elsewhere, and that’s why it is embedded in codes of conduct – note how
Google fired Damore specifically for violating its code of conduct.

The response to the Google memo – from both Google itself and the many
who have praised the sacking – has turned traditional notions upside
down. We see an overreaction to the memo, and an underreaction to the
punishment of its author.

A solitary software engineer finds the time to muse about diversity
policies (and I thought Googlers worked around the clock, eating and
sleeping in the office), and everyone freaks out. His loudest critics
have engaged in bad faith: they have distorted what Damore said, given
him no benefit of the doubt, and assumed the worst about him as a
person. It really takes a jaundiced eye to view him as some kind of
fanatic, based on what he wrote. Moreover, it is a huge stretch to say
that this employee constitutes a one-man hostile work environment. No
evidence has been provided that he acts in a discriminatory way towards
his co-workers.

Damore is called out for being a sexist, yet what is really insulting is
how women employees at Google are assumed to be too weak to handle his
10 pages of scribblings. Google’s female workers ‘are hurting and feel
judged based on their gender’, says Picahi. You know what the real
‘harmful gender stereotype’ is here? The idea that women are vulnerable,
and in need of protection (which can only come from firing fellow
employees). That expresses a lower opinion of women than anything in
that memo.

The demands to fire Damore – and anyone else who shares his views – are
casually made, as if it’s no big deal to deprive someone of a job. ‘How
can women expect to work with Damore?’, they ask, again presenting women
as too pathetic to cope with his presence. It used to be considered
deeply problematic to punish workers for the political views they held –
even today, the Hollywood blacklists of the 1950s are viewed as a black
mark in American history. And yet, we now see Google managers on Twitter
talking of compiling blacklists to weed out Damore’s fellow wrong-thinkers.

Companies are not universities, even those that have a ‘campus’.
Employees shouldn’t be spending hours debating social and political
ideas – they should be getting on with their work. With the uproar over
the Google memo, some claim that we’re seeing the campus culture wars
coming to the corporate world. In fact, you could argue it is the other
way around: universities have adopted longstanding corporate codes of
conduct regarding diversity and other restrictions, which makes
wide-ranging interrogation of these ideas verboten, and undermines the
true purpose of a university.

That said, while work isn’t college, we do need the freedom in our
workplaces and society generally to express ourselves – to our
co-workers, neighbours and others – without fear of retribution. We
should not feel like we are going to be punished for expressing
unpopular thoughts, nor should we worry for our jobs if someone takes
offence. But the over-the-top reaction to the Google memo suggests we
may be heading in that direction.

Sean Collins is a writer based in New York. Visit his blog, The American
Situation.

(4) Google Anti-Diversity Manifesto Author Identified And Fired

http://www.ibtimes.com/google-anti-diversity-manifesto-author-identified-fired-2575617

Google Anti-Diversity Manifesto Author Identified And Fired

BY FIONNA AGOMUOH

ON 08/07/17 AT 11:43 PM

The author of a 10-page anti-diversity manifesto, titled "Google’s
Ideological Echo Chamber," has been fired from the company as of Monday
evening, according to Bloomberg. The ex-Google software engineer has
been named as James Damore by Motherboard, who originally broke the
story Saturday.

The 3,300-word document has prompted comment from Google CEO, Sundar
Pichai, who has cut his family vacation short to address the issue,
according to CNN Money.

Read: Google Anti-Diversity Manifesto Sparks Response From Company's VP
Of Diversity

"Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in
their lives," Pichai wrote in a statement obtained by Recode. "To
suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less
biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK."

The manifesto primarily detailed Damore’s opinions on biological
differences between the genders being the reason for disparities in the
number of women working in technology related professions, as well as
for the gender pay gap.  Motherboard has now obtained a version of the
manifesto, which was originally shared as a Google Doc file, and
includes links and citations from publications and sources including the
Wall Street Journal, Quillette, and Wikipedia.

The document has stirred comments from present and former Google
employees, who have spoken out both against and in favor of Damore’s
opinions. In particular, the ex-Googler stressed that Google employees
with conservative viewpoints are not given the freedom to express their
opinions. However, Pichai stated in his memo that with his manifesto,
the engineer violated Google’s code of conduct.

Google’s newly appointed Vice President of Diversity, Integrity &
Governance, Danielle Brown issued a statement Saturday addressing the
manifesto and also citing Google’s code of conduct.

Google’s latest diversity report indicates the company is comprised of
69 percent men and 31 percent women, with its tech related roles being
performed by 80 percent of men and 20 percent of women.

(5) James Damore: "This Is Why I Was Fired By Google"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-11/james-damore-explains-why-i-was-fired-google

James Damore: "This Is Why I Was Fired By Google"

by Tyler Durden Aug 11, 2017 6:55 PM

Fired Google engineer Jame Damore has penned an op-ed for The Wall
Street Journal explaining how his good-faith effort to discuss
differences between men and women in tech couldn’t be tolerated in the
company’s "ideological echo chamber," adding that self-segregation with
similar-minded people has grown in recent decades as we spend more time
in digital worlds "personalized to fit our views."

     I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote
and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and
how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in
the wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female
disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and,
yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief
Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated
the company’s code of conduct and "cross the line by advancing harmful
gender stereotypes in our workplace."

     My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned,
well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I
was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the
company’s "ideological echo chamber." My firing neatly confirms that point.

     How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the
world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific
debate and reasoned argument?

     We all have moral preferences and beliefs about how the world is
and should be. Having these views challenged can be painful, so we tend
to avoid people with differing values and to associate with those who
share our values. This self-segregation has become much more potent in
recent decades. We are more mobile and can sort ourselves into different
communities; we wait longer to find and choose just the right mate; and
we spend much of our time in a digital world personalized to fit our views.

     Google is a particularly intense echo chamber because it is in the
middle of Silicon Valley and is so life-encompassing as a place to work.
With free food, internal meme boards and weekly companywide meetings,
Google becomes a huge part of its employees’ lives. Some even live on
campus. For many, including myself, working at Google is a major part of
their identity, almost like a cult with its own leaders and saints, all
believed to righteously uphold the sacred motto of "Don’t be evil."

     Echo chambers maintain themselves by creating a shared spirit and
keeping discussion confined within certain limits. As Noam Chomsky once
observed, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to
strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively
debate within that spectrum."

     But echo chambers also have to guard against dissent and
opposition. Whether it’s in our homes, online or in our workplaces, a
consensus is maintained by shaming people into conformity or
excommunicating them if they persist in violating taboos. Public shaming
serves not only to display the virtue of those doing the shaming but
also warns others that the same punishment awaits them if they don’t
conform.

     In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by
stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in
the world are the result of discriminatory treatment.

     When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our
diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or
charge of misogyny. I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my
peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored.

     Everything changed when the document went viral within the company
and the wider tech world. Those most zealously committed to the
diversity creed—that all differences in outcome are due to differential
treatment and all people are inherently the same—could not let this
public offense go unpunished. They sent angry emails to Google’s
human-resources department and everyone up my management chain,
demanding censorship, retaliation and atonement.

     Upper management tried to placate this surge of outrage by shaming
me and misrepresenting my document, but they couldn’t really do
otherwise: The mob would have set upon anyone who openly agreed with me
or even tolerated my views. When the whole episode finally became a
giant media controversy, thanks to external leaks, Google had to solve
the problem caused by my supposedly sexist, anti-diversity manifesto,
and the whole company came under heated and sometimes threatening scrutiny.

     It saddens me to leave Google and to see the company silence open
and honest discussion. If Google continues to ignore the very real
issues raised by its diversity policies and corporate culture, it will
be walking blind into the future—unable to meet the needs of its
remarkable employees and sure to disappoint its billions of users.

As a reminder, a survey of Google employees reflected the company's
divisions.

     Of 440 Google employees who responded to a Blind survey on Tuesday
and Wednesday, 56% said they disagreed with Google’s decision to fire
Mr. Damore.

(6) Why I Was Fired by Google - James Damore

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-was-fired-by-google-1502481290?mg=prod/accounts-wsj

Why I Was Fired by Google

James Damore says his good-faith effort to discuss differences between
men and women in tech couldn’t be tolerated in the company’s
‘ideological echo chamber’

By James Damore

Aug. 11, 2017 3:54 p.m. ET

I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and
circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how
they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the
wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female
disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and,
yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief
Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated
the company’s code of conduct and "cross...

(7) It may be illegal for Google to punish James Damore

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google-to-punish-engineer-over-anti-diversity-memo-commentary.html

Why it may be illegal for Google to punish that engineer over his now
viral anti-diversity memo

An unnamed male software engineer at Google sent an internal memo to
co-workers on Friday challenging some of the tech giant's diversity efforts.

There have been a lot of calls for the man's dismissal from both inside
and outside the company.

However, it could be illegal for Google to fire — or discipline — the
employee.

Many inside and outside of Google have called for the man's dismissal.
However, there are at least three ways the law may keep the company from
imposing any discipline.

First, federal labor law bars even non-union employers like Google from
punishing an employee for communicating with fellow employees about
improving working conditions. The purpose of the memo was to persuade
Google to abandon certain diversity-related practices the engineer found
objectionable and to convince co-workers to join his cause, or at least
discuss the points he raised.

In a reply to the initial outcry over his memo, the engineer added to
his memo: "Despite what the public response seems to have been, I've
gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their
gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree
with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our
shaming culture and the possibility of being fired." The law protects
that kind of "concerted activity."

Second, the engineer's memo largely is a statement of his political
views as they apply to workplace policies. The memo is styled as a
lament to "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber." California law prohibits
employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or
refrain from adopting a particular political course of action.

Danielle Brown, Google's newly installed vice president of Diversity,
Integrity, & Governance, made it clear that the engineer's memo does not
reflect "a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or
encourages."

An employee does not have free reign to engage in political speech that
disrupts the workplace, but punishing an employee for deviating from
company orthodoxy on a political issue is not allowed either. Brown
acknowledged that when she wrote that "an open, inclusive environment
means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views,
including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions."

Third, the engineer complained in parts of his memo about company
policies that he believes violate employment discrimination laws. Those
policies include support programs limited by race or gender and
promotional and hiring scoring policies that consider race and gender.
It is unlawful for an employer to discipline an employee for challenging
conduct that the employee reasonably believed to be discriminatory, even
when a court later determines the conduct was not actually prohibited by
the discrimination laws. In other words, the engineer doesn't have to be
right that some of Google's diversity initiatives are unlawful, only
that he reasonably believes that they are.

Brown is correct that an employee has no right to engage in workplace
discourse that offends anti-discrimination laws; employees may not
engage in unlawful harassment under the guise of protected concerted
activity or political grievances.

The lawful response to this software engineer's memo, however, appears
to be continuation of the dialogue he started rather than termination of
his employment.

Commentary by Dan Eaton, a partner with the San Diego law firm of
Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek, where his practice focuses on defending
and advising employers. He also is a professor at the San Diego State
University College of Business Administration where he teaches classes
in business ethics and employment law. Follow him on Twitter

@DanEatonlaw.

(8) Text of  James Damore's Anti-Diversity screed at Google

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-circulating-internally-at-google/

Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating
Internally At Google

Kate Conger

Aug 6, 2017, 8:00am

A software engineer's 10-page screed against Google's diversity
initiatives is going viral inside the company, being shared on an
internal meme network and Google+. The document's existence was first
reported by Motherboard and Gizmodo has obtained it in full.

In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and
is titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", the author argues that
women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and
discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological
differences between men and women.

"We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism", he writes,
going on to argue that Google's educational programs for young women may
be misguided. ==

{quote}

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These
differences aren't just socially constructed because:

They're universal across human cultures [...] I'm simply stating that
the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in
part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. [...]

Women, on average, have more:

Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas.

Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than
things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).

These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs
in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it
requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work
on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics. [...]

We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we
never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often
require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a
balanced and fulfilling life.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men
into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they
entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress
jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous
jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer
93% of work-related deaths. [...]

The Harm of Google's biases

I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should
strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race
representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:

Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender
or race [5]

A high priority queue and special treatment for "diversity" candidates

Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity"
candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

Reconsidering any set of people if it's not "diverse" enough, but not
showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation
bias)

Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can
incentivise illegal discrimination [6]

These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases
and can actually increase race and gender tensions. We're told by senior
leadership that what we're doing is both the morally and economically
correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left
ideology[7] that can irreparably harm Google.

Why we're blind

We all have biases and use motivated reasoning to dismiss ideas that run
counter to our internal values. Just as some on the Right deny science
that runs counter to the "God > humans > environment" hierarchy (e.g.,
evolution and climate change) the Left tends to deny science concerning
biological differences between people (e.g., IQ[8] and sex differences).
Thankfully, climate scientists and evolutionary biologists generally
aren't on the right. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of
humanities and social scientists learn left (about 95%), which creates
enormous confirmation bias, changes what's being studied, and maintains
myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap[9]. Google's
left leaning makes us blind to this bias and uncritical of its results,
which we're using to justify highly politicized programs. [...]

My concrete suggestions are to:

De-moralize diversity.

As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in
terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral,
and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the "victims."

Stop alienating conservatives.

Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and
political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant
ways in which people view things differently.

In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that
feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We
should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express
themselves.

Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad
business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness,
which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work
characteristic of a mature company. [...]

  Deloitte drops workplace diversity groups for women, minorities

http://www.newspapers2day.com/news/deloitte-drops-workplace-diversity-groups-for-women-minorities

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2017/07/31/deloitte-drops-workplace-diversity-groups-for.html

Deloitte is doing away with employee groups focused on women and
minorities, a new diversity approach one scholar says must be
accompanied by serious and intelligent discussions.

Tuesday 08 August 2017 - 06:45:44

The New York-based financial advisory firm has the right idea, because
employee affinity groups marginalize people, said Christina Hoff
Sommers, a gender politics and feminism scholar.

A recent Bloomberg report detailed Deloitte's plans for replacing
affinity groups for women and minorities with "inclusion councils" that
include people who used to be in different single-identity groups. They
also will include white men…. Many large U.S. companies have had
single-identity workplace groups for years…. For instance, Target Corp.
says on its corporate website that it has more than 100 networks for
employees with common interests, plus six councils that represent
African-American, Asian-American, LGBT, Hispanic, military and female
employees. The councils provide networking and professional development
opportunities…. But Deloitte decided to dismantle those types of groups
after learning that many millennial employees don't like to be labeled
by a single part of their identity. About 57 percent of Deloitte
employees are millennials.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-19/deloitte-thinks-diversity-groups-are-pass

Deloitte Thinks Diversity Groups Are Passé

The firm is nixing employee affinity groups for women and
minorities—fixtures at many large companies—and replacing them with
inclusion councils that have white men.

By Jeff Green

July 19, 2017, 8:00 PM GMT+10

[...] With diversity progress stalling in parts of corporate America,
Deloitte is beginning to shift away from traditional approaches built
around gender, race, or sexual orientation and instead working to get a
broader buy-in, particularly from white males. After 24 years, WIN, the
women’s initiative at Deloitte, will end. Over the next 18 months the
company will also phase out Globe, which supports gay employees, and
groups focused solely on veterans or minority employees. In their place
will be so-called inclusion councils that bring together a variety of
viewpoints to work on diversity issues.

"We are turning it on its head for our people," says Deepa
Purushothaman, who’s led the WIN group since 2015 and is also the
company’s managing principal for inclusion. Deloitte will still focus on
gender parity and underrepresented groups, she says, but not in the same
way it has for the past quarter-century, in part because millennial
employees—who make up 57 percent of Deloitte’s workforce—don’t like
demographic pigeonholes.

"By having everyone in the room, you get more allies, advocates, and
sponsors," Purushothaman says. "A lot of our leaders are still older
white men, and they need to be part of the conversation and advocate for
women. But they’re not going to do that as much if they don’t hear the
stories and understand what that means."

Xerox Corp. is often credited with creating in the late 1960s the first
employee resource group (ERG), based on race, after riots shook major
U.S. cities. Since then, groups focused on gender, sexual orientation,
disability, and veteran status have emerged. According to a 2014 report
by the Society for Human Resource Management, which offers the most
recent data from the organization, only 15 percent of large companies
had ERGs for women or minorities. But they’re fixtures at lots of
high-profile companies, from Citigroup’s Pride organization for LGBT
employees to General Motors’ GM African Ancestry Network to Apple’s
Women@Apple.

No company in recent memory has been as vocal as Deloitte about the need
to turn the page, surprising some diversity advocates. "I have to say
that is really unusual," says Jennifer Brown, a consultant who helps
companies create employee programs focused on racial or gender identity.
"I have not heard of a single company doing that." [...]

Deloitte says its diversity shift is leading to enhanced inclusion of a
key constituency: men. Brent Bachus, a 21-year veteran who’s now
managing director for talent inclusion and engagement, says that before
he was assigned to the inclusion effort a few years ago, he sometimes
didn’t see a direct connection between himself and the firm’s women or
minority business resource groups because he didn’t fit any of the
criteria for joining one. "I don’t know that I necessarily felt like I
knew what role I was being expected to play, or if I even had a role,"
he says. With the inclusion council, he adds, he and other managers are
expected to have a direct role in creating an environment that will keep
employees of all backgrounds from leaving the company and help attract
new talent. [...]

BOTTOM LINE - Diversity groups for specific genders or races have been
around since the 1960s. Deloitte thinks it’s time to move beyond them.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/deloitte-replacing-diversity-groups-for-minority-employees-2017-7?r=US&IR=T

Deloitte has decided diversity groups for minority employees are a relic
of the past

RICHARD FELONI

JUL 21, 2017, 1:25 AM

Deloitte US has decided that it’s time to move past diversity groups
focused on gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or even veteranship,
Bloomberg reported.

Over the next 18 months, the accounting and consulting firm will phase
out groups like the Women’s Initiative (WIN) and LGBT group Globe, and
replacing them with "inclusion councils" where all employees are
welcome. It’s primarily an attempt to bring the majority — white men —
into the conversation.

It’s not an abandonment of any progressive principles, WIN’s national
director Deepa Purushothaman told Bloomberg. "By having everyone in the
room, you get more allies, advocates, and sponsors. A lot of our leaders
are still older white men, and they need to be part of the conversation
and advocate for women. But they’re not going to do that as much if they
don’t hear the stories and understand what that means."

Bloomberg reported that leadership at Deloitte is associating ERGs
(employee resource groups), which emerged in the US in the civil rights
movement of the 1960s, with Baby Boomers and Generation X, and
associating total inclusion movements with millennials.

In June, Deloitte US CEO Cathy Engelbert announced that she was a
steering committee member of the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion
initiative, where 175 senior executives across the US publicly committed
to shared diversity goals.