I’m An Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader And I’m Sick Of Our Approach To Diversity!

Started by Solar, August 23, 2017, 09:12:28 AM

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Solar

Smart woman.
Good read, more at the link below.

I ran cross-functional engineering projects managing 20–30 men (engineers mostly) at Google. Most of the time, I was the only woman. Men who reported to me liked and respected me. Men who managed me liked and respected me.
Before you get all worked up about what I say here, I've had my exposure to gender biases, subliminal and deliberate, and I wrote some thoughts on Balancing Brains, Beauty, Boobs & Booty for fellow women in tech.
Go read that to set your state of mind if you have to.

This post is to highlight how sick I am about our approach to diversity and what we could do instead to dramatically improve the situation.
In the copious hiring I did at Google, 97% of the people I hired were men. I wrote reams of appeals to the hiring committee to make cases for cross-functional candidates who would be great assets to Google, even though a (typically) male dominated software engineering interview crew did not find these candidates up to snuff. I had a 90+% success rate changing the hiring decision for these candidates. Almost every one of these hires made an amazing difference to the company. 98+% of these candidates were men.
It's not like I wasn't trying to hire women. But I was working with a candidate pool composed of 90% men. Try software engineers with experience in sensors, wireless and hardware stacks before angrily correcting my stats there. There was no way I was going to come out of that with a larger percentage of women hires than I did.

I left Google to build UrbanAMA. As a woman entrepreneur, I wanted to build a company that had a diverse team. I'm ashamed to admit that I've failed miserably so far.
We try hard, but again find ourselves with a 98% male candidate pool. You should know that we are an early stage startup that cannot afford market salaries. Despite that, we paid premium salaries to bring a few women who did well in our interviews. But, they lacked the energy to put us into overdrive. Worse, they were starting to drain the energy from the rest of the team. Eventually, we had to do the right thing for the company and let them go. I'm now back to being the only woman on the (tech) team.

That said, I'm proud to say that our freelance journalists on UrbanAMA are predominantly women and are kicking butt on the AMAs they are hosting. You should really check it out if you haven't — they'll blow your mind too!
But on the point of diversity in tech within the company, it's a miserable state of failure so far. And that's not because we didn't try.
I'm a mother of two kids — a 7 year old boy and a 9 year old girl. They both generally have a reasonably good grasp of math and logic. You could say they are biologically meant to be fluent in math and analytics (with a mom that scored an 800 in GRE analytics and a dad that scored an 800 in GRE quants, anything else would be unexplainable).

This summer, we got into beginner Python. The boy can't stop taking on problems while the girl has declared that she hates it. She's very ready to take on Photoshop and create filters and stickers for UrbanAMA though!
Case in point: Sometimes, girls do gravitate more towards creative rather than logic problems, either naturally or due to the environment around them. I'm doing my part to start encouraging my own kids early. We need more of it.
Confession: I have told my daughter it isn't optional to learn coding and that she must stick with it until she's good at it and then she can choose not to do it (parenting advisors, stop rolling your eyes now!).


After diversity attempts at large companies and my own startup and the attempts to start tech early with my own children, I can tell you that our obsession with diversity and attempts to solve it are only fucking it up for the actual women in tech out there!
What do I mean by this?
We get upset about the state of gender diversity in tech
We make a pact to hire more women
The pool has (a lot) more men than women
After some rounds of low to no success, we start to compromise and hire women just because we have to
These women show up at work and perform not as great as we want them to
It reinforces to the male population that was already peeved by the diversity push that women aren't that good at tech after all
They generalize that observation on the entire women in tech community
Sooner or later, some such opinions get out there
The feminists amongst us go crazy
The diversity advocates are caught in a frenzy and make a pact to hire more women (again)
This loops. Infinitely.
In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech.
And this makes me sick.

Before you label me a traitor, let me tell you what I am in fact 100% supportive of fighting against

https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999
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Hoofer

sounds too familiar.

'How to create misery in the office, and hatred towards the company.   turn PC and turn away talent.'

I'd like to encourage Google and other PC companies to continue to narrow their focus on the inept workforce, it allows start up companies the opportunity to snatch the most talented & get off to a good start.
All animals are created equal; Some just take longer to cook.   Survival is keeping an eye on those around you...

supsalemgr

Quote from: Hoofer on August 23, 2017, 09:44:05 AM
sounds too familiar.

'How to create misery in the office, and hatred towards the company.   turn PC and turn away talent.'

I'd like to encourage Google and other PC companies to continue to narrow their focus on the inept workforce, it allows start up companies the opportunity to snatch the most talented & get off to a good start.

They can't help it - too many liberals.
"If you can't run with the big dawgs, stay on the porch!"

Solar

Quote from: Hoofer on August 23, 2017, 09:44:05 AM
sounds too familiar.

'How to create misery in the office, and hatred towards the company.   turn PC and turn away talent.'

I'd like to encourage Google and other PC companies to continue to narrow their focus on the inept workforce, it allows start up companies the opportunity to snatch the most talented & get off to a good start.
Spot on!
It's true, they lose the best talent because they piss off the best employees by promoting idiots around them.
Libs claim they want a classless society, but ignore human nature of its tribal and psychological attributes/classes.
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Hoofer

Quote from: supsalemgr on August 23, 2017, 11:12:54 AM
They can't help it - too many liberals.

For those who work in environments, similar to Google...  and would like to speak up about it, but need-the-job-to-survive, so they suffer in silence.    You are not alone.    These hostile work environments are created by HR departments who make examples out of protecting the smallest of minorities by denying the majority of the normal, day-to-day activity & conversation.   HR unwittingly goes to great lengths to stifle creativity, ingenuity and job performance. 

When one HR director got 'royally pissed off' because just a handful of people dropped what they were doing to attend her lecture on diversity & micro-aggressions (or some non-job related thing) - the next time she made it mandatory.   How many customers were effected, and other operations were HALTED because this woman wanted to be heard, is stunning.  She alienated forever the people in the company, the time she took away, was made up by every salaried employee, without any compensation in pay or time off.   Message received, you're a flaming bitch with an agenda, damn the company, damn the employees - you're legacy is misery and strife.

Problem is... they can't just fire people like that, not without a lawsuit.   So they get shuffled around, lateral moves, hoping they'll quit and go away quietly.   When they eventually retire, they're just as deceived - thinking they're heroes, but were loathed, and everyone breathed a collective sigh-of-relief to see them depart.  Finally... we can get back to making money instead of trying to be so darn PC.
All animals are created equal; Some just take longer to cook.   Survival is keeping an eye on those around you...

walkstall

Quote from: Hoofer on August 23, 2017, 09:44:05 AM
sounds too familiar.

'How to create misery in the office, and hatred towards the company.   turn PC and turn away talent.'

I'd like to encourage Google and other PC companies to continue to narrow their focus on the inept workforce, it allows start up companies the opportunity to snatch the most talented & get off to a good start.

Hmm...

That like saying "One Person's Trash Is Another Person's Treasure."
A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.- James Freeman Clarke

Always remember "Feelings Aren't Facts."

supsalemgr

Quote from: Hoofer on August 24, 2017, 05:38:24 AM
For those who work in environments, similar to Google...  and would like to speak up about it, but need-the-job-to-survive, so they suffer in silence.    You are not alone.    These hostile work environments are created by HR departments who make examples out of protecting the smallest of minorities by denying the majority of the normal, day-to-day activity & conversation.   HR unwittingly goes to great lengths to stifle creativity, ingenuity and job performance. 

When one HR director got 'royally pissed off' because just a handful of people dropped what they were doing to attend her lecture on diversity & micro-aggressions (or some non-job related thing) - the next time she made it mandatory.   How many customers were effected, and other operations were HALTED because this woman wanted to be heard, is stunning.  She alienated forever the people in the company, the time she took away, was made up by every salaried employee, without any compensation in pay or time off.   Message received, you're a flaming bitch with an agenda, damn the company, damn the employees - you're legacy is misery and strife.

Problem is... they can't just fire people like that, not without a lawsuit.   So they get shuffled around, lateral moves, hoping they'll quit and go away quietly.   When they eventually retire, they're just as deceived - thinking they're heroes, but were loathed, and everyone breathed a collective sigh-of-relief to see them depart.  Finally... we can get back to making money instead of trying to be so darn PC.

One of my bosses in my early career told me the HR was really the "Crisis Creation Dept.". They must have a crisis to be relevant. If they don't have one they will create one.
"If you can't run with the big dawgs, stay on the porch!"

Solar

Quote from: Hoofer on August 24, 2017, 05:38:24 AM
For those who work in environments, similar to Google...  and would like to speak up about it, but need-the-job-to-survive, so they suffer in silence.    You are not alone.    These hostile work environments are created by HR departments who make examples out of protecting the smallest of minorities by denying the majority of the normal, day-to-day activity & conversation.   HR unwittingly goes to great lengths to stifle creativity, ingenuity and job performance. 

When one HR director got 'royally pissed off' because just a handful of people dropped what they were doing to attend her lecture on diversity & micro-aggressions (or some non-job related thing) - the next time she made it mandatory.   How many customers were effected, and other operations were HALTED because this woman wanted to be heard, is stunning.  She alienated forever the people in the company, the time she took away, was made up by every salaried employee, without any compensation in pay or time off.   Message received, you're a flaming bitch with an agenda, damn the company, damn the employees - you're legacy is misery and strife.

Problem is... they can't just fire people like that, not without a lawsuit.   So they get shuffled around, lateral moves, hoping they'll quit and go away quietly.   When they eventually retire, they're just as deceived - thinking they're heroes, but were loathed, and everyone breathed a collective sigh-of-relief to see them depart.  Finally... we can get back to making money instead of trying to be so darn PC.
It's a cancer and far worse than the private sector. The Fed makes indoctrination mandatory, where an individual is chosen to present the govt rules dictating male behavior, and it's usually a dike that does it. Yes, it was always about targeting white males, every fuckin time!

I walked out of everyone the moment I realized what they were doing, they never scheduled these, they just popped them on us, the entire station, all 75 employees.
I got in an argument on the last one I ever attended, some bitch decided to target me for her mental issues, I fired back, left everyone speechless and told everyone there, "this is my last fuckin PC indoctrination," and walked out, it was also my last month, it took that long to can me.
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Hoofer

Quote from: supsalemgr on August 24, 2017, 06:09:58 AM
One of my bosses in my early career told me the HR was really the "Crisis Creation Dept.". They must have a crisis to be relevant. If they don't have one they will create one.

That's a good description.  They will survey the company, OPPS! not enough minorities, gotta recruit more of them, no talent necessary, just gotta have them.  then they hire a few, who immediately feel slighted, because pulling their own weight is impossible (there were no talent hires, can't expect performance).  Next someone get's tagged as a harasser, and the entire department gets remedial training, sensitivity training - cross that line one more time and you're toast.

One place went looking for a gay dude, to fill a position as a cook.   He TOLD them he was HIV positive, and might miss work, since he was destined to go full-blown AIDS.  In the meantime, he infected a single mother with a preteen kid, before she knew he was HIV/AIDS positive.   When she suddenly got sick, and tests showed she was going down hill faster than he was, then the whole HR department stepped in.   Everyone was offered free HIV testing, and subject to some of the most repulsive movies about the lifestyle (which had nothing to do with the dude or the girl, he was a drug user - but, meh, why let a crisis go to waste?).

She died less than a year after this guy started working at the joint, he started missing work - and the company saved a ton of money because nobody wanted to touch anything he touched, sweated over, or occasionally spit on (he was verbally reprimanded for it).   He was dying, pissed at the world & food safety was the last thing on his mind.   All this time, HR kept telling saying, you're safe, it's hard to transmit, blah, blah, blah.   Tell that to the girl who left a preteen kid behind, without a parent.   When the guy died, at least HR attended his funeral, doubt anyone else did.

HR created the crisis, managed it till the end, and lost an employee in the process, putting hundreds at risk for the sake of PC.
All animals are created equal; Some just take longer to cook.   Survival is keeping an eye on those around you...

taxed

Google thinks there's an equal number of men and women with tech skills?  One would think a tech company would know better.
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