CyberShark, you pose great questions. I honestly don't have a ton of knowledge in this area, I've been mostly speaking out of personal principles and philosophy. I think some other posters will probably address the questions quite nicely, but I also do think you bring up a grievance I have with the left (which I tried to illustrate while getting kerowoed - so maybe successfully?) where emotional outrages of minority or underprivileged groups often get valued far more highly than evidence and rational analyses.

so, no discrimination because all of your interviews took 7 hours. just amazing logic.

The point is, there exists a rigorous interview process that is highly technical, doesn't mean individual cases of discrimination can't exist. But systemic discrimination is highly unlikely, because why give rigorous technical interviews if you are going to discriminate based on gender. Kind of defeats the point of technical interviews which is to assess your ability in order to discriminate based on your ability.

I'm not an expert but I have seen evidence that Wolfram is correct about free societies ending up quite strongly gendered. There are however reasons why Google might want to manufacture an artificially diverse workforce. It turns out women actually use Google's products. A lot. So having women on board for developing the products, mapping Google's marketing strategies, etc etc could very well be a good idea for them. At which point conservatives will pounce on me and go AHA! You're OK with women being preferentially hired, but I bet you wouldn't be OK with WHITE MEN getting preferentially hired?! To which my reply is, context is a *****.

I have to say that it's kind of a tell when people get mad about that stuff. Like, people get super rustled about Harvard's diversity policies, but check this out:

That strike anyone as meritocratic? Nobody cares about that though. The only biases that send people like googlebro to DEFCON 1 are the ones where maybe people like him aren't getting their dues.

the interview process in tech has been heavily criticized. all firms are looking for better ways to identify and recruit talent. we have had long discussions about it on this forum.

to act like its some perfect process bc you spent 7 hours with a few company is just incredible.

Never said it was perfect, I said if firms are spending a lot of time and resources to distinguish talent using long technical interviews it's far more likely that they are hiring based on ability rather than gender.

FYI I don't think a perfect interview system exists.

Cyber, you're missing 2 key points.

1. You're assuming discrimination is always a conscious decision. "why give rigorous technical interviews if you are going to discriminate based on gender" - you don't think you are going to discriminate based on gender, but based on your upbringing, life experiences, personal biases, etc. etc. you may subconsciously prefer to hire a man.

2. You are completely strawmanning the discrimination process. As I said before (I think) - discrimination doesn't mean let's just throw out this girl's resume because she has boobs. It can certainly mesh in quite naturally and subtly in a technical interview process. Maybe you think a girl is a 88% match but a guy is an 85% match and give him the role anyway. You don't arrive at those numbers (note, these numbers don't actually exist, it's a simplified description of what may be going on) without the technical interview, and it also allows for nonzero female hires.

You (Cyber) also are conflating the interview with the entire highering process. There are plenty of filter spots before you are brought into an interview.

Sure, the problem with the subconscious bias argument is that it's hard to prove, do we have evidence that a significant proportion of decision makers in tech are subconsciously bias against women? (Actually the only study I've seen seems to show that women with the same qualifications as men are twice as likely to get a job in STEM) I'll try to find the article for you. Even this study isn't perfect, because does the same qualification necessarily translate to the same job performance? Honestly I think the best solution is to let companies make their own decisions. I think we are often too quick to point the finger and shout sexism.

Perhaps, but for a lot longer we were more likely to shout, hey sugartits get me some coffee.

Its very natural for anyone to be more concerned about alleged injustices against themselves or people like them. That's natural human behavior. We shouldn't fault black people for focusing on black issues, we shouldn't fault feminists for focusing on feminist issues. This isn't a competition. The one that has the biggest grievance shouldn't get to silence other grievances.

And I think most of the rage isn't towards the arguably unfair pro-diversity policies. It is towards the orthodoxies surrounding them that silence any criticism or attempt at discussion.

while that may have been true historically, is it still true today?

It sounds like the only "silencing of discussion" going at google is people disagreeing with him. Apparently there is free political discussions in there internal forums.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/...women-over-men

I think it might have been this one, not sure I came across it a while ago. I might have mis-remembered cos it seems to be about stem faculties in universities rather than industry.

Anyway, I maintain that we should leave companies to make their own hiring decisions, if they want to hire more women, then great, if not, its their company.

I think the whole hire x% of women or discrimination is unhelpful.

Do you fire everybody that you disagree with?

Not sure if any company is actually imposing quotas, are they? I would probably disagree with that. I think the idea though is to just put extra effort into making women feel more accepted in the tech world, because such a low % being women probably indicates high inefficiency - both in terms of social biases and highering men > more qualified women.

FWIW a buddy of mine (who works in tech and doesn't think the manifesto was that bad) posted a poll on FB asking if women avoided tech due to discrimination or think they've been discriminated against. This is the only reply so far:

From the politics forum:

Sums it up pretty well for me.

Seems pretty obvious this guys didn't read the memo either.

The complaint made in the manifesto doesn't include the firing...

It proved his point though, didn't it?

I think the firing is a no-brainer and a completely separate issue. You could PROBABLY justify the firing purely economically, nevermind the liberal/youthful persona I'm sure they'd like to maintain.

Not in the slightest. He left google no choice when he started talking about women not being suited for jobs they already held at google.

Where does he say this?