Google employee fired for comment/controversy about women and tech, what role did autism play

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone afraid to debate whether a race or gender is better suited for certain jobs.

Because most people are hypocrites. They pretend outrage on things that directly contradict others. They have zero capacity for logical thinking but pretend they do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel very sorry for the guy. He seemed to understand things literally and when there was no response to his memo (really, no one could tell him in private the memo wouldn’t fly?!), he started to be nervously aggravated like some people on the spectrum tend to be when things don’t go as planned.
He then was taken advantage of by various people... he is naive.
He should have a press secretary. Hopefully he will understand he needs to run his views and opinions by someone before making them public.’

No one should have NEEDED to tell him the memo wouldn't fly, because he should have understood as a manager that denigrating groups that are represented among his direct reports was the wrong move.

As for needing a "press secretary," he has a NT girlfriend that he could have run this by, but he didn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone afraid to debate whether a race or gender is better suited for certain jobs.

Because the debate relies on theories and averages and jobs go to individuals. Whether the data suggest that a person of a certain race or gender MIGHT be better suited for a certain job doesn't tell you a lot about whether or not the individual in front of you is suited for it. In fact, what all that data does is give you a bias through which you evaluate the qualifications of the person in front of you. If you think the data are showing that women are less suited to do something, you are likely to discount the credentials of a woman who has the same qualifications as a man. This has ALSO been shown with data. Since jobs are filled by people and not statistics, we need to figure out the best ways to hire people with the right qualifications. Overcoming biases to identify the top candidates from a wide pool benefits organizations more than excluding large groups of potential hires--even if (and I don't necessarily accept this "if") the average capability of the group is lower than that of other groups.

That's not even considering the fact that most jobs require a range of skills -- technical ability, communication skills, interpersonal skills. I don't know of studies showing that any race or gender is superior in all dimensions of intelligence and skill necessary for intellectual work. Finally, there are plenty of studies that show that complex work benefits from diverse perspectives--errors and defects are identified earlier and work attributes are closer to client demands when a team that is gender and racially diverse is involved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel very sorry for the guy. He seemed to understand things literally and when there was no response to his memo (really, no one could tell him in private the memo wouldn’t fly?!), he started to be nervously aggravated like some people on the spectrum tend to be when things don’t go as planned.
He then was taken advantage of by various people... he is naive.
He should have a press secretary. Hopefully he will understand he needs to run his views and opinions by someone before making them public.’

The article says he has a girlfriend who is apparently willing to provide him with the perspective that he cannot figure out on his own, and he refuses her help. This is the "he isn't learning" part--he should have learned after the Harvard incident to get an outside perspective. I don't know if that is related to HFA or not.

Autistic people exist in a social world they don't understand. They may not even realize how far off their social perceptions are, and so may refuse help. They can also be very stubborn. So I do think this is all part of his HFA, and unless he is willing to learn those social skills, he is poorly suited to management and is not even well suited to understanding human behavior research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone afraid to debate whether a race or gender is better suited for certain jobs.

Because most people are hypocrites. They pretend outrage on things that directly contradict others. They have zero capacity for logical thinking but pretend they do.

Why do you assume the outrage is "pretend." You may disagree with it, but they doesn't mean they don't really feel it.