On the Perils of Remaining a Nerd - 2

In an attempt to give a clue to those who still don't understand the Google firing of Damore:

It would be perfectly OK for Damore to say that all employees should get the opportunity to be mentored.  It would have been perfectly OK for Damore to demand it.  It would have been perfectly OK for him to have organized a public demonstration at the public entrance to the Google headquarters.

It is not OK for Damore to say that the employees in Google who currently get mentors are biologically disadvantaged and that is why the mentorship program is in place, and why it is misguided, and so on.  Your colleagues who have been through the hiring process and who have worked in the corporation and have had satisfactory performance are your equals.

And if you can't/don't get this, then I can't explain it any further.

PS: similarly the "truth" of whether women are the same or different than men in the general population is irrelevant.  The issue is whether the women working at Google are qualified to do their jobs.  I'm quite certain the answer is yes - Google isn't operating a charity.   Then if Google finds that women aren't getting their progressions and promotions and so on that their performance record says that they have earned, they are going to find that they need a diversity program. And they do.  This happens, not because Google as a corporation has some intrinsic fault, but because Google employees are hired from a culture which often finds offensive women being something more than just decorative (e.g., think of the scorn heaped on "pant-suit". Or that the country elected Trump).   A corporation can't rectify that in the culture as a whole, they do what they can within their boundaries.

PPS: Also see this:
http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/google-james-damore-diversity/ 

PPPS: and this:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/9/16122072/google-diversity-bias-training-james-damore-memo

On the Perils of Remaining a Nerd

A Google engineer, let's call him X, wrote a now infamous memo on the diversity programs in Google, and was fired for it.  Yonathan Zunger wrote a good analysis of this memo, and what he recommended happened - X was fired.  So most of my commentary ought to be superfluous.

Let's note that Google is a business, not a university, think-tank, research institute or public forum.   It is incumbent on every employee not to embarrass their employer, and that too, on the employer's dime, if the employer is not doing anything illegitimate.   X violated this rule in spades, and no matter what the content of his memo, that alone justifies his being fired.

When I first read X's memo, the thing that was important that I latched on to is something Zunger latched on to as well (I read Zunger much later) and that is maybe why I like Zunger's analysis.

One very important true statement which this manifesto makes is that male gender roles remain highly inflexible.

A second thing to note is that as a business, Google would want to keep a good work environment for all its employees.   A senior engineer mouthing off that an entire section of the Google workforce - the women employees - are where they are because of Google's affirmative actions, does not contribute to that work environment.   That too is a good cause for being fired.

A third thing to note is that if you think that X was saying something original, or speaking truth to power or some such, about the nature of men and women, is that no, he wasn't.  It isn't original; it isn't the truth If you think that the scientific literature supports what X says, do remember, most of the research that is relevant is on WEIRD people (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic, acronym via Jonathan Haidt),  i.e., a peculiar and biased sample of the human race.  Taking these to be the way things are is unscientific.

Another issue causing debate, this not from X, but from Zunger is this:

Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. 

If you doubt it, think GNU & Linux,  and all the open source that's out there; the collaborations that produce standards, the engineering and scientific collaborations that produce things like the CERN collider, and so on.  Or cities, and power grids and such.  Google is into producing things of this scale.

If you’re a professional, especially one working on systems that can use terms like “planet-scale” and “carrier-class” without the slightest exaggeration, then you’ll quickly find that the large bulk of your job is about coordinating and cooperating with other groups.

Also note that Zunger does explicitly state that one's technical competence comes first, and is a given for his analysis.  

What about an abrasive personality like Steve Jobs?  Well, first, he had an uncanny ability to get into the mind of the customer and figure out what would appeal to them; and second, if you read about Apple culture, abrasive though Jobs was, he built effective collaborations.  Third, Jobs didn't build a lot that was "planet-scale" or "carrier-class".  The brilliant loner engineer certainly can have something to offer - but probably in a different sort of business than Google.

 

About Dunkirk

Sunny Singh writes in the Guardian:

What a surprise that Nigel Farage has endorsed the new fantasy-disguised-as-historical war film, Dunkirk. Christopher Nolan’s movie is an inadvertently timely, thinly veiled Brexiteer fantasy in which plucky Britons heroically retreat from the dangerous shores of Europe. Most importantly, it pushes the narrative that it was Britain as it exists today – and not the one with a global empire – that stood alone against the “European peril”.

To do so, it erases the Royal Indian Army Services Corp companies, which were not only on the beach, but tasked with transporting supplies over terrain that was inaccessible for the British Expeditionary Force’s motorised transport companies. It also ignores the fact that by 1938, lascars – mostly from South Asia and East Africa – counted for one of four crewmen on British merchant vessels, and thus participated in large numbers in the evacuation.

 .....

Perhaps Nolan chose to follow the example of the original allies in the second world war who staged a white-only liberation of Paris even though 65% of the Free French Army troops were from West Africa. 

......

All storytellers – and novelists, poets, journalists, and filmmakers are, ultimately, just that – know the power we hold. Stories can dehumanise, demonise and erase. Such stories are essential to pave the way for physical and material violence against those we learn to hate. But stories are also the only means of humanising those deemed inhuman; to create pity, compassion, sympathy, even love for those who are strange and strangers. Stories decide the difference between life and death. And that is why Dunkirk – and indeed any story – is never just a story.

Book memo: Billy Bunter & The Schoolboy Broadcasters

"The Schoolboy Broadcasters" is "This week's ripping school story of Harry Wharton & Co. at Greyfriars".  This week is February 12th, 1927, and this is the facsimile edition of The Magnet  published by Howard Baker Press, London.

The students at Greyfriars get a chance to broadcast their stuff over a new experimental radio station, and get into a bigger adventure than one would have imagined. 

The Magnet's Motto: "Clean, Wholesome Literature!".  That it is.

The Republic dodges a bullet - barely

While most commentators are focused on the fate of the people and their healthcare, which is proper, I'd like to draw attention to the travesty that Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell almost succeeded in pulling off.

The House gave its assent to a bill that could not otherwise get a majority of the votes in the House on the assurance that the bill would be changed anyway in the Senate; and the Senate was cajoled to do the same on the assurance that the bill would be changed anyway in conference.   That is, this was a way to get through a blank check legislation that could not get votes in the House and in the Senate, and that would take shape in conference.

This attempt failed with 46 Democrats, 2 Independents and 3 Republicans voting against it in the Senate.  While 50 of them had been holding firm from the outset,  one of them, the "political maverick" John McCain, finally put his vote where his speeches have been.

For this travesty of democracy, in my opinion, Ryan, McConnell and all their willing collaborators should be tarred and feathered and driven out of town.

PS: Yes, what is so democratic about tarring and feathering?  Do understand this - in my opinion, Ryan and McConnell are oath-breakers - they have broken their oath to uphold the Constitution, not technically, but in spirit.  Yes, they have broken no laws, they've operated within rules of procedure, etc.  I guess we could try to make airtight rules - but the operation of any system involving humans requires a certain minimum of character and integrity.  It should not require endless rule-making to constrain people to do the right thing.   In my opinion, these folks have forfeited any claim to any consideration, they should be "cast into the outer darkness".

Josh Marshall: The Darkness and the Rot

One of Marshall's best pieces so far.

The key insight:  "Eventually I sensed that Trump wasn’t inducing people’s self-destruction so much as he was acting like a divining rod, revealing rot that existed already but was not apparent."

Steve Dickinson: How to sell your high-value equipment in China

Via BRF, I came across these three posts on how to do business in China.  It seems like a credible set of posts to me, and is pretty amazing and dismaying.   I'm not excerpting anything here, read the three parts.  I wonder how all of this squares with WTO, free trade and all the other standard rhetorical garbage that is trotted out. If you have answers, comments are welcome.

Part I: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/02/how-to-sell-your-high-value-equipment-to-china.html
Part II: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/03/how-to-sell-your-high-value-equipment-to-china-part-2.html
Part III: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2017/03/how-to-sell-your-high-value-equipment-to-china-part-3.html