nowo

> Can you explain to me the point I've made that you're arguing for or against with your question.

The idea in your comment is that you can't, or at least are dissuaded, to express certain opinions. Most the things I hear about Google, including the existence of a list talking about the harms of political correctness, that the author felt free to write such a report and many other reported freedoms at work indicate that this isn't the case. That in fact people at Google are more free to express themselves in these types of issues than at other companies.

You're the one who seems to be upset. I wrote one line and you jump to conclusions, question my motives, dig into my comment history and even managed to bring up Hitler. I try to argue the facts. Maybe you should question yourself as you question others.

You realize his paper was posted to a list at google called "pc-considered-harmful"?

I stumbled on that one too. But of course a high cost of living results in a low score and vice versa. Probably should have called it affordability.

As far as I know the concept is the same in every country. I really don't understand what you are talking about. When you sign a contract you agree to become an employee under the terms of the contract and employment law. When they agree to make you an employee they agree to follow employment law. So if they don't they are effectively breaking the contract. If the don't want that they have to not sign such an agreement. Which would sometimes be breaking the law but that is another issue.

> If you sign a contract with your employee saying you won't do no-poaching then doing so would be a breach of contract obviously but that would be a specific use-case.

You contract is "employment law" + "your contract". I they don't agree with employment law they have to override it in your contract, in this case with a non-compete clause. If they don't, you have both agreed to the terms in "employment law" + "your contract".

This is one of those arguments the grand parent was talking about. Unfortunately this argument is why someone has a larger salary than someone else, not why there are disparities between groups. Unless different groups unequally finds themselves being "right person at the right moment", it should statistically average over time.

That said, I don't see a good reason to defend salaries that don't match performance. It's sometimes a reality, but still not desirable. Especially since many times being the "right person at the right moment" isn't luck. It's knowing the right people and having that matters more than your performance.

I think it was wrong to fire him too. But honestly it somewhat of a feat to manage to criticize large parts of the organization, make a large part of the company angry and end up on big news sites, all at the same time. Especially since Google is pretty infamous for their hiring process, keeping things internal, flagging troublemakers and protecting their reputation.

It's pointless to claim "lack of critical reading ability" without presenting an argument, since anyone with critical reading ability would have to dismiss that statement as unsupported.

Everyone is saying that they are open to discuss this, but as soon as someone says what they think about the paper they are met with dismissal. People interpret his large focus on the biological traits of women, by presenting those traits as the primary cause of the gender gap and without showing causality between those traits and the gender gap as disrespectful. Because it suggests that women are primarily at fault. That he inserted a few disclaimers and tries to avoid responsibility by saying things like "possible" doesn't really make things better but further the feeling that he didn't really care to what degree it was true.

> I haven't seen a single criticism of the paper that even recognizes the author is referencing large-scale incontrovertible research involving the Big-5 personality model (the giveaway is the use of terms "agreeability", "conscienciousness", "neuroticism").

Because it isn't relevant. The major weakness of the paper isn't that there are studies suggesting some differences between men and women, but that it doesn't convincingly argue why these difference are relevant to what is being suggested.

I don't agree that this is a benign reason in itself. Regardless if you say that women don't want to be programmers now or that women never wanted to be programmers, you have to find a good reason why they don't want to. Because women have no problem sitting in front of computers in economics, so why do they in software?

I don't think it is hard to find a good reason why someone wouldn't go into nursing (even if this wouldn't disprove sexism in nursing). It has barriers to entry by requiring formal education, which can be competitive. The working conditions are somewhat difficult having to work irregular hours and be exposed to emotional stress as in seeing people dying. At the same time it still relatively low status, not necessarily well paid and has limited career prospects.

Of course you can argue that this shouldn't be the case. That the profession should help people dealing with stress and have good working conditions etc. Still it much harder to imagine these sort of "hard" reasons, negative things that are inherent to the profession, when it comes to programming.