[dinoleif]

Ridiculous puff piece & PR job. There is not a single piece of data in that entire article.

The way this works is:

1/ Google crunches some data

2/ The company leadership looks at that data, twists it to leave out "inconvenient" facts, and tells whatever narratives they want to tell (internally and to the NYT)

3/ No data or any empirical results are ever released (even internally)

[jpatokal]

Do you work at Google, or what are you basing these bold assertions on?

FTR, I'm a manager at Google. I don't feel qualified to comment on the research or the specifics of this article, but I can assure you Google takes building effective teams pretty darn seriously.

[dinoleif]

Of course Google takes building effective teams seriously (and rightly so, it's People Ops org does good work), but that doesn't really have anything to do with the dynamic here.

[xxs]

Which of the assertion do you consider bold?

I also read the article and saw no data points or anything that would suggest "some of the company’s best statisticians, organizational psychologists, sociologists and engineers" had any numbers to work with. (beside that certain employees were involved)

[jamra]

Are you suggesting that working at google somehow impacts OP's ability to read the article and determine if the article cites data?

[sgift]

Point 2/ is the more interesting one - it's an accusation without any proof or hint, bordering on conspiracy theories.

[sgt101]

You could read it that way, but it's something that I see in many different organisations when talking to people about how they do the data science-in'

The thing is that confirmation bias is real, and cost and time often preclude the use of strong systems to exclude it. Additionally The Tribe quickly develop narratives which then dominate funding and discussion. Phrases like "we've moved to execution".

Before finger wagging at dumb managers starts... consider Richard Feynman : https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment

[Veratyr]

He didn't say anything at all about OP's ability to read the article. "bold assertions" clearly refers to the 3 points he lists and you seem to be deliberately misreading.

OP made some very bold claims about how Google works internally and unless he's a first-hand witness (Google employee), he really needs to provide some data of his own to back his assertions up.

[jamra]

I read the OPs comment as partly a comment on how Google has been releasing social commentary without releasing the raw studies specifically on gender and salary. They were being investigated for cheating women on salary.

I read the response from the Googler as an appeal to authority. If Google doesn’t release the study, they open themselves up for conjecture and skepticism.

To criticize OP for being inaccurate is fine, but absent any references, Google is making the same argument as the Googler.

[tajen]

Or he’s suggesting that if he worked at Google he would face an immediate disciplinary measure. He said he’s a manager so he’s involved in the prosecution that J. D. denounced (and was fired for).

[dinoleif]

I made a mistake. It turns out that there are actually 9 articles as part of that series, so I have to make a correction:

There is not a single piece of useful data in any of those 9 articles.

[sgift]

And useful data is defined as ...? This is an NYT article, not a scientific paper. No idea what you expected here ..

[huzzar]

Disregarding the article, there is plenty of open and available research for this have a look here http://cci.mit.edu/mciresearchpage.html

[tajen]

Is there a relationship between NYT and Google? I’m surprised how they are (politically) aligned to display a coherent message.

[antonvs]

Google has a big office in NYC, so that could have something to do with it.