| Wrongthink is a play on some of the Newspeak terms in George Orwell's 1984, it roughly equates to a thoughtcrime. Sexual harassment, discrimination, racism and personal attacks absolutely do not belong in the workplace. The usual advice is to keep politics out of the workplace, but "progressive" ideals are often the default with nobody batting an eyelid. You run the risk of being marked as a non culture fit if you ever voice opposition to or question "progressive" talking points or assertions. I'm not even talking about actionable slights against other staff here, just a difference of opinion which people seem to interpret as a personal attack. An example would be somebodies thoughts on affirmative action or other methodologies to try and create a more "diverse" environment. Regardless of your intentions, I still see it as a kind of discrimination. I dread to think how uncomfortable I would be knowing that I was a diversity hire, and some arbitrary box I fit in was the reason for my hiring rather than my skills and experience. Its why I have kept it quiet at work that I'm gay, I don't want people walking on eggshells around me, thinking I'm going to flip out at some perceived slight. I personally also see the diversity-friendly hiring practises as a bit of a bodge, if you believe that under-representation of certain groups is not the correct, natural equilibrium of how things should be, wouldn't it make more sense to try and fix it at the root cause, during peoples social development and education? I understand the value of role models but it seems like there are probably more direct factors at play. As a child I can't think of anything that would make you more of a social paraih than an interest that is considered "nerdy", from my experience boys get it a bit easier with such interests and attract a bit less derision. Girls seem to be even less understanding when it comes to that kind of interest, especially from other girls. I can very easily see how that kind of social feedback would make you think twice about pursuing certain interests. I didn't really have that many friends growing up, and largely didn't give a shit about what other people thought of me, so I pursued whatever I found interesting and useful. Sorry if this comment is a bit scatterbrained, its a bit difficult for me to collect my thoughts on the subject, there is a lot to talk about and I feel the need to try and justify my views before I get pecked apart for being a bigot. |
I completely agree that affirmative action kind of backfires in some ways. I'm not entirely sure what the solution to that is.
> I dread to think how uncomfortable I would be knowing that I was a diversity hire, and some arbitrary box I fit in was the reason for my hiring rather than my skills and experience.
This was actually brought up by a woman at one of the TGIFs at Google and the response was that we don't hire people just because they fit into some arbitrary category. I do think that we make an attempt to get a more diverse group of people into the application pipeline, but you certainly wouldn't be hired just for the sake of diversity. That doesn't stop people, even within the company, from being misinformed however.
> As a child I can't think of anything that would make you more of a social paraih than an interest that is considered "nerdy", from my experience boys get it a bit easier with such interests and attract a bit less derision. Girls seem to be even less understanding when it comes to that kind of interest, especially from other girls. I can very easily see how that kind of social feedback would make you think twice about pursuing certain interests. I didn't really have that many friends growing up, and largely didn't give a shit about what other people thought of me, so I pursued whatever I found interesting and useful.
I think that Google does try to do this. This is why we have many programs encouraging women to get into CS majors and the such, because like you say, it's difficult to get more diverse hires if the application pool is not diverse.