[andrewprock]

The most telling quote:

"Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate"

Lowering the rate of false negatives does not lower the bar. If anything, it just improves the process and yields more qualified candidates. If you increase the rate of false positives, then you would in fact lower the bar.

It's muddled thinking like this that makes me doubt his ability as an engineer, not to mention his ability as a social scientist.

[panda88888]

Here's my understanding of Google's hiring practice. In essence, Google optimizes to minimize false positive (i.e. hiring unqualified engineers). Hence, even if an applicant meets the bar (i.e. qualified), it is still a crapshoot whether the person is hired or not. By lowering the false negative rate (i.e. rejecting qualified applicant), the effective hiring rate for the target demographic group is higher if all other factors are assumed to be constant (and that's a big if and debatable).

Edit: Another way to say this is, if an applicant simply meets the bar, the person is most likely not hired. Conversely, an applicant needs to far exceed the bar in order for interviewers to vouch for the person and improve odd of hiring.

On the other hand, applicant that fits into the targeted demographics are probably afforded additional consideration, even if the person's interview did not wow the interviewers as much, hence the "lowering the bar" argument. It is not lowering the standard bar, but rather the "score", if you will, the applicant needs to clear the bar.

The best analogy I've read so far is that the candidate's score and its error bar must clear the bar. But affirmative action applicants are extended the courtesy of second look, which reduces the error bar, hence lower score is needed for the score and error bar to clear the Google bar.

[whytaka]

It's two words in a double-triple negative. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.

[zzalpha]

It's two words in a double-triple negative

Well now I just doubt his ability as an engineer, social scientist, and writer of the English language... ;)

[wwalser]

I'm not in this guy's head but, it's not difficult to come up with a charitable interpretation from his perspective. Let me be clear, I'm not saying that this is what I believe. I'm saying that based on the rest of his writing, this _one potential_ lense through which he may have constructed this sentence.

> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

> decreasing the false negative rate

(Again! This is from his POV): The false positive rate has not gone up. The diverse candidates are, in fact, qualified and should have their jobs. They are excellent. I am going out of my way to make sure no one interprets this deluge of text as me questioning my peers ability; something that I will fail at in spectacular fashion.

> lower the bar

(His POV don't pin this on me): However, diverse candidates may now have a lower bar than non-diverse candidates.

How is it possible that some candidates have both a "lower bar" and yet are still qualified?

> Hiring practices

(still his POV folks): Because for diverse candidates we have different hiring practices. Practices which are tailored to diverse candidates. It's not a lower bar, it's a different bar. A bar specifically designed to help us discover the best side of these diverse candidates.

(Speaking for myself now): I think the author is saying that going out of your way to create specific affordances for _some_ and not for _all_ is discriminatory. I _don't_ think he's a horrible monster for thinking this. I _do_ think that this way of thinking fails to acknowledge the fact that an organization that is already steeped to the brim with a specific group of people is likely to _already_ have built in affordance for that group.

He fucked up. Hard. Like so hard that I find it kind of funny (wtf was he thinking?). I, personally, don't think that the ideas that he espoused merit firing, I think they merit careful correction wherein the person doing the correcting attempts to read his meaning charitably, carefully, truthfully and fully. I feel that most of the public responses have failed in this regard. Most of what I've seen start with "he's basically wrote: {$straw_man}". Some are pandering to an audience, some are more interested in winning than in being right, but some people who retort in this way just have limited time and patience. I can understand why the straw man is appealing. I've just written three paragraphs about a single sentence, who has time for this shit?

Here's the thing though, careful correction, truth, charity—that's my "ideal world" case for him. The simple matter of fact is that Google is not the ideal world, they have no incentive to apply my ideal to him. He's a professional and the fuck up alone (separated form the ideas) represents enough potential harm to Google that he had no hope of keeping his job. Maybe one of his friends can give him the careful walk through of how his ideas are flawed. Hell, maybe a good friend will do that and he'll decide that he was right all along.

Edit: After further reading I realized I had made a mistake when I (speaking from his POV) said: "it's not a lower bar, it's a different bar". He did actually use the words "lower the bar", something I failed to fully account for. One could, with liberal amounts of charity, imagine that he meant that the bar was lower but still sufficient? We're getting into logical acrobatics. That said, logical acrobatics are part of the point. The goal in reading someone whose world view is different to your own is to better understand their logic. To imagine how, within their world view, their ideas are consistent. We could be reading the words of a monster who doesn't care about logic. Or we could, and I think this is much more common, be reading the words of someone with flaws and ignorances and prejudices. Someone not so unlike ourselves.

[deanCommie]

He fell into the conservative trap of "If there is no active rules or laws discriminating, then discrimination doesn't exist! And trying to offset this discrimination IS the discrimination!"

Slavery and Jim Crows laws no longer on the books? Therefore there is no systemic racism!

Are there laws discriminating against women? No? Therefore they have all the same opportunities as men!

Why are Black Entertainment Television and Gay Pride okay, but White Entertainment Television and White Pride not!

Black Lives Matter is Racist!

Not all Men are Rapists!

This essay started from precisely this set of emotions and found data to justify it after the fact.