I was with you until you made this point. I find it very difficult to believe that one unnamed engineer who makes a point about biological differences in a larger piece about “Ideological echo chambers” can cause significant harm to people across the company. I hope that Googlers in general are not that emotionally fragile and are rendered unable to function, just because one unnamed employee out of nearly 75,000 wrote something that you claim to not be a legitimate idea! Seriously?
I do not agree with the author’s contention that biological differences are to blame for under-representation of women in tech. However controversial this point may be, I also know that this is not a new argument at all. The last time it created a furore like this was in 2005, when Harvard President Larry Summers made a similar argument citing some research and anecdotal evidence based on his kids. It wasn’t the only point he made, but just like what happened here, the media and everyone immediately pounced on the one argument that they found to be incorrect/offensive and he later apologized.
The “Larry Summers question” keeps coming up. As recently as 2014, an academic explained in a blog in the Scientific American that prejudice alone doesn’t explain the gender gap in Science/Tech. He too faced the wrath of social media, forcing the journal to issue a statement. The Google author seems to cite many of the contentions made by Steven Pinker in a debate about gender differences.
In any case, your claim that “nearly everything in the document was wrong” is hyperbole. What disappoints me is that when you claim the author “just created a textbook hostile workplace environment” or that “not all conversations about ideas have basic legitimacy”, you actually proved the author’s first two contentions stated in his TL;DR summary:
- Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
- This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
Am I the only one who finds it sad and disappointing that the mainstream media and pretty much everyone basically ignored everything else the author wrote and only focused on the one contention that is offensive/sexist? By suggesting that the employee should be fired, aren’t you confirming that there are some “sacred topics” where any dissension or disagreement is shamed into silence?
Many would in fact agree with the claim that folks in SF Bay area and successful tech companies like Google do live in a bubble. Even the author who describes himself as a “classical liberal” is being shunned because he dared express an unpopular and unsupported view about why representation of women in tech is low.
I understand Journalists focus on the most controversial aspect of any piece to create a headline and gain more viewership. “Selective outrage” seems to be how commenting works on Twitter too. But why should we do the same on Medium, which celebrates the long form essay and critical thinking?
Young students on college campuses may be excused for mistaking “freedom from offense” as a requirement of psychological safety. However, what is termed “offensive” seems to get broader every day. When public discourse about topics like discrimination, sexism, race etc is reduced to folks taking stands like Innocent/Guilty, Morally right/wrong, Wise/Stupid, valuable/harmful — everyone is worse off and we end up more divided than ever in our Echo chambers.
