Do you know anything about the actual history of that law and the fight for healthcare for poor in your country?

The law isn’t perfect. So very far from it. But uh, that’s not because of liberals that want to help people in poor ghettos.






Sure, Democrats have had bad policies in the past. But let’s compare actual positions today. That’s what this discussion is about.





Your level of ignorance never ceases to amaze. Hell, even the Pope doesn’t support much of the so called conservative agenda of the US. Black churches aren’t turning out in droves to vote conservative.








Lol. Punished so much that they still hold overwhelmingly more positions of power, jobs, wealth, basically every single metric possible.

Like how absurd is it to look at Googles gender/race breakdown and think ‘gee, white men are really being punished!’

Even IF it were true (it’s not) the effort must be so unbelievably poorly managed that it’s achieving the exact opposite results of what they’d be trying to achieve.

Dave, you’re not a victim.

This, right here, stuff like this is why I won't engage with daveT. It actually doesn't matter whether it's intentional or not, he posts as if he lives on another planet and only visits earth to post on 2+2.

It's funny when it's on the subject of working as a programmer in the other thread, but here it's just sad.

this. his posts simply are not tethered to reality.

Are jews considered white in silicon valley?

I can't decide how I feel about this until I know how it will affect me personally.

Yes. Do you remember that the last "yes" vote for the ACA was a Democrat from Ohio. Obama took him (Kucinich) up in Air Force One for a bit of a chat to change his mind.

So, no, the dems weren't really on board either but more or less did it to get the ball rolling in some direction.

No law is perfect, obviously, but there was just too many large things in that law that needs to be ironed out. For the record, I do believe that healthcare should be a given in this country. I don't know what the correct solution is, but I know that what we have now definitely is not.

And that's what I find so confusing about it. The people who complain the loudest and condescend the poor don't realize that this law, among others, is actually more damaging than helpful to the poor. It's a strange disconnect I don't comprehend and one that I never will.

Sure!

But if they are positions, I want to see that they are positions they take legit actions on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Califo...n_8_%282008%29

The National Election Pool poll showed that support for Proposition 8 was strong amongst African American voters, interviewed in the exit poll with 70% in favor, more than any other racial group

You also have to add many caveats. A black voter in the south is more likely to be a conservative, and so on...

Once again, the fact that Google can't hire more women isn't the fault of Google. There are less women who program than men and Google is located in a part of the country where women are severely outnumbered. Even if they hired every single person in their area, the ratio would be 6 men for every 4 women. It doesn't take a PhD in graph theory to figure out 50 / 50 is impossible.

What is the fault of Google is the active shaming of departments that aren't held up to some quasi-standard. They are at fault for giving women an easier test and fast lanes to employment. But we'll all just polish this over with "we only hire the best."

Do you not understand that I'm making a mockery of the silly logic and smug generalizations about conservatives? Yes, if a conservative says stupid ****, I mock them as well.

No. You are spouting blatant falsehoods.

Aca with medicaid expansion was amazing for poor ppl. They got free and heavily subsidized insurance.

Dave, go look at exit polls for the Alabama Senate election and tell us more about how black people in the South are "more likely to be conservative". The things you believe about the world are utterly stupid and easily disprovable falsehoods, which is why having any kind of reasoned discussion with you is a futile exercise.

The path that Dave takes in these discussions is always entertaining. Like I have no idea how he thinks Obama and Kucinich have anything to do with helping his point that conservatives are the only ones helping ghettos.

I like how you’re so very worried about ‘the active shaming of departments’. Like that’s even a top 1000 thing that people of colour or women deal with in the professional world. But, ****, it’s really hard to be a man.

The best part of the ‘shaming’ argument is that it can only apply when men are already over represented. So even if we take it at face value (and we have no reason to do that) it can only apply when men are obviously NOT being oppressed.

It’s basically the ‘it’s worse to be called racist than be a racist’ argument. It’s ok for men to be overrepresented but it’s really uncool that they should have to listen to people tell them that they’re overrepresented.

But don’t forget everybody. Dave grew up poor and knows real oppression.

Oh man, I totally missed that comment.

The one reason to engage is that you get to take these wonderful unexpected tangential trips through various topics and hot takes. Each post is like a box of chocolates.

You can cherry pick data all day.

His assertion was that black churches don't go out and vote conservative, and I pulled up Prop 8. It is a well-known fact that Prop 8 proponents called on heavy support from the various churches and got out the vote, so to speak.

I should be more clear, blacks in the south are more likely to be conservative than blacks in the city. This in no way means that all blacks in all southern states vote conservative.

The point is that neither side helps the poor. I'm not sure why this is hard for you to understand.

Sigh... the point is that it's impossible to have 50 / 50 m / f in SF, period

Do you believe that it helps a woman to be given easier tests for employment? Do you believe that her coworkers, both men and women who took the hard way are going to support her or resent her?

I never once said that I'm against women in tech, never once said that men aren't at an advantage. I'm appalled by the way it is handled. I'm not sure why this isn't clear to you.

I'm pretty sure any guy can look around and see there is a sausage party.

What Google did was force employees to attend meetings to listen to 2nd wave feminists.

The feminists called out departments for not having more women. These feminists don't even work at Google, so of course, they are the perfect people to shame the male employees. They openly congratulated departments that had more women than men because...?

How can this possibly seem right to you?

1. lol, zero self awareness in writing that
2. Uh, before those black voters got to prop 8 on the California ballot, did they fill the bubble next to "John McCain" or "Barack Obama"? Remind me, exactly who's cherry picking here?

This is another perfect example of why you are too uninformed for anyone to do anything with your opinions other than laugh at them.

Cherry-picking means nothing, which the point.

Don't you live in a democratic stronghold with a load of homeless people and working people sleeping in their cars? Don't you all constantly strike down proposals for more housing and other public services? You can feel good for voting liberal and you label yourself as such, but it doesn't mean **** when you actively build a world that is the exact opposite of what you say you want. Some liberal values you all have up there. (by you, I mean the general population, not you specifically).

I'm still waiting for the proper defense of why women should be given easy tests and fast lanes to employment. I also want to know the Bay Area's plan to get 50/50 parity in an area with 60/40 that isn't totally stupid.

And I'll favor you a real bombshell. I have no clue what white / male privilege means. I personally never experienced it, so maybe it would help if you bring me up to your level of knowledge on this one.

First, your claim was actually that conservatives were the only people that helped the poor. So, nice try at attempting to change what you said.

Second, I pointed out to you all the ways that one party is helping the poor while the other is actively ****ting on them. Your only counter was to ignore most of it and then comment on how the "liberal" health care law was still flaws - without any actual knowledge it seems of why and how its flawed and what party bears a bunch of the responsibility for those flaws.

And, finally, the ability to accuse us of cherrypicking data in this discussion is amazing. Let's have someone pick a random sample of elections and see how many of them involve black people supporting the conservative view point. I'm happy to bet money on this too. Are you?

It's actually not. But, sure, its hard. It's almost like you'd need to make an effort...


You keep talking about this, I'll post below my general thoughts on this, but I'd like you to actually give me the details of this. What were these tests? How were they easier?


Lol. Yeah, I'm sure you're totally baffled.


It's not right and its dumb if it happened as you portray it. I'm highly skeptical of the claim (as far as I know its only in the class action claim) and suspect it was actually just cheering for teams with high levels of diversity - which is a totally reasonable thing to do when there's a clear overall diversity problem at Google and in the industry as a whole.

But, and here's the thing again, it's not a big deal. It's not even close to a big deal. And I've explained why before. That you think this is major proof of "massive discrimination" at Google is why I know you aren't actually appalled at the lack of gender diversity in Google and the industry.

Let's start simple:

You give women opportunities. People follow jobs and money. Do you think Silicon Valley is where it is because there were just a bunch of aimless tech workers hanging around looking for jobs?


First, like I asked above, I'd love to hear what exactly the easier test is. But let's put that aside.

Let's start with a few premises:

1. All else being equal - gender diversity is good. It's good for the business. It's good for society. It's food for individuals.

2. Hiring is a really inexact 'science'. It's hard, its noisy, its expensive, and its full of false positives and false negatives.

3. (And this one might be controversial to you - but let's put a pin in that) The current system is at best neutral for men and women and is much more likely to be favourable to men and unfavourable to women.

So... if you're "appalled" at the state of gender diversity in the industry it literally makes no sense at all to support the status quo of hiring. It's not working in this sense.

If (2) is true, we've very unlikely to have a perfect or particularly accurate test. And even if we had a perfect test for an individual (we don't) - if (1) and (3) are true - it's not giving us an optimal outcome at the company level. We would be getting 'the best' individuals but sacrificing the benefits of diversity.

So, what's a good change? It's to modify the hiring process to be more advantageous to individual women. We're unlikely to be giving anything up at the individual level and we'll improve overall.

And this is like the worst case scenario where the process really is just made overall easier for women - which I don't advocate for.

In general, I think its a good idea to more forgiving of candidates that you need to increase diversity at the resume screening / phone screening level and then maintain the same interview process after that. This is because resume/phone screens have relatively high false negative rates and you can accept extra false positives (people you waste time interviewing and then rejecting) because that effort is part of the process of increasing diversity (which is good!).

And finally, easier tests for a subset of candidates is reasonable in a whole bunch of other cases where that subset has other attributes that are worth bringing to the table. A couple of examples:

I give older and more experienced candidates less theory questions than I do a candidate just out of school. Some would call this "easier" but its really just acknowledging that they bring different skills to the table and how you identify those skills changes.

Firemen (and firewomen) often have lower physical standards as they age. This acknowledges that as we age we're less able to do certain things. The trade off, of course, is that their increased experience is more valuable than their relative lack of physical ability.

lol did you just admit to giving women easier technical interview questions?

Striving to make a unfairly rigged system more fair is not "punishing" the population that benefits from the rigged system. It could feel like that to the privileged beneficiaries if they are blind to the inequity.

Can you read? What did you think he said there?

I can read between the lines. It's pretty clear he does because he thinks women bring other attributes to the table.

Seems sexist imo.

No, I didn't.

Also...

I think "easier" is a stupid word. I wouldn't give an 'easier' question to one group of people over another. I gave an example of what I mean by this. Dave might think skipping a Big-O notation question for an experienced candidate is giving them an easier interview - but the interview is the same length and it just means I'm spending more time doing something like talking about their past experiences.

I actually laid out what my preferred process would be for improving diversity in hiring. It requires candidates to meet the same bar before being hired.

Maybe, you should read what I actually wrote. Like I said, I laid out what I actually think is a good way of improving diversity.

Also, its not at all sexist to think a diverse group of employees is better than a non-diverse group of employees. If it makes you feel better, I think a software shop with mostly women should try to hire more men.

k

The problem is that the diversity problem starts at two basic facts (once again...):

There are less women than men in the Bay area, and this more true towards the South Bay.

There are less women than men in programming.

These two things alone make it impossible for anything close to 50/50, and if there is a company that is 50/50, simple math tells use that they are discriminating. Yes, I know it's politically incorrect to say men can be discriminated against.

The data that I would like to see is what percentage of male college grads end up with no job in say, one year after graduating -vs female college grad with no job in one year.

Or some other metric, like who is more likely to end up at Google -vs- who is more likely to end up at a bs "programming job" earning $12 / hour, etc.

A programming degree isn't a golden ticket. I should know since I've sifted thousands of resumes for non-programming positions, and there is a significant amount of people with programming and other STEM degrees searching for jobs that are well beneath their education level.

There seems to be an assumption (and correct me if I'm wrong) that all programmers are going to get a great job, and that women are at an inherent disadvantage of finding a decent job strictly based on their gender, assuming fresh grads, which is what Google is more or less focused on.

Has anyone asked women how they feel about all of this? Has anyone asked them if they want easier tests and other accommodations that point out their token gender?

Regarding the class action suit, I can only take it at face value. Google has some of the best lawyers in the industry and I don't think it'd be smart to libel them.

Here's the copy of the lawsuit for reference. It's stunning legal writing.

https://www.scribd.com/document/3686...Action-Lawsuit

The Google Recognition Team allowed employees to give fellow employees “Peer Bonuses” for arguing against Damore’s political viewpoints. Peer Bonuses were typically reserved for outstanding work performance or for going above and beyond an employee’s job duties. Defending the liberal agenda, or defending violations of California employment law, is not in any Google employee’s job description.

In one example of this, an employee gave a Peer Bonus to another employee, and stated that the bonus was for “speaking up for googley values and promoting [diversity and inclusion] in the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is [Damore’s Memo].” The Google Recognition Team reviewed this justification, considered it appropriate, and allowed the bonus to proceed.

This isn't at all true. There are still more than enough women in the area to make any particular company 50/50.

Those companies that actually address diversity issues and make themselves more appealing as employers to women will recruit more women in the area at the expense of other companies that don't make that effort.

And, also, let's be clear. From http://uk.businessinsider.com/google...cs-2017-2017-6 just 20% of tech employees at Google are women. [Edit: And this is up a WHOPPING 3% since 2014 where 17% of tech employees were women. LIFE IS SO UNFAIR FOR THE WHITE MAN!!!!]

You wouldn't know stunning legal writing if it hit you in the face. I'm happy to get into that with you, but first, I'd like a response to the two questions I asked before:

1. Want to create a bet on those Black christians and how they vote?

2. Please explain to me how Google hired women with "easier" tests.

I never said that... it's not huge secret that I've been on more interviews (and likely more contract jobs) than this entire subforum combined. I'm well aware that there are different levels of difficulty for each experience level. Personally, I have no opinion on this style of hiring.

I take issue of 2 JR level applicants being treated different based on gender. I understand that humans are more likely to hire similar people, so more specifically, I have an issue if it is specifically within company policy to treat to JR level applicants being treated differently based on gender.

I did once interview for a job that was all women.