Why Google Fired Me

https://twitter.com/realabril/status/1341135819487100928

36 35 6 years ago

I'm confused. Google had never hired from a HBCU and she increased it by 300%. Wouldn't that imply that it's still at 0?

elicash2• 6 years ago

THAT was your takeaway? That when she said she took it from 0 HCBU students to 300 students she also incorrectly said 300%?

pizza2342• 6 years ago

I had a similar takeaway.

The overall poor wording - odd number(s), bad words and grandeur - support the impression that it's a rage post, rather than a (at least attempted) faithful, balanced, report of the fact.

benfrain• 6 years ago

LMAO — spot the programmer!

duiker1012• 6 years ago

Really, even in the comments of the thread the fact that so many people are hung up on that is absolutely baffling. Of all the awful stuff that is said in there, that's the comment they want to make?

MaximumYComb2• 6 years ago

Yes. In her Twitter thread she implies that she was able to judge the HBCU curriculums to be equal to that of white universities while also not understanding the basics of percentages. Maybe I've got outrageous demands but I expect any making decisions on a CS curriculum to understand percentages.

LunaSea• 6 years ago

The other takeaway is that she hired 300 students that usually don't meet the required skill levels.

insensible• 6 years ago

I thought that perhaps she was the first one.

ALittleLight• 6 years ago

Could be correct, technically she says before her role existed Google had hired zero from HBCU and that she hired 300 increasing the number by 300%.

In other words timeline is: Google hires nobody from HBCU, she joins, Google hires 100 apart from and she hires 300. Now, both statements are true. Google hired none before her and she tripled Google's HBCU hiring.

Odd that she both hired 300 and increased by 300% so maybe she misstated something, but it's not logically impossible.

dehumanise• 6 years ago

something doesn't add up! :D

Orthw2020• 6 years ago

The reason Google never hired an HBCU student straight out of undergrad into one of their key engineering roles is because they didn’t believe talent existed at these institutions- until I showed up.

I pity white working class American males: no classic class privilege and no modern victim privilege.

peteretep3• 6 years ago

Ironically, my understanding is they're also the most likely to vote against minimum wages, social security, universal health care, Pell Grants and so on, and to have bought into specious arguments about meritocracies.

Hat tip to this book[0] "issues of race point to underlying problems in society that ultimately affect everyone, not just minorities".

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Miners-Canary-Enlisting-Resisting-Tra...

neilsense2• 6 years ago

Maybe they aren't looking for an easy way out like others.

defertoreptar• 6 years ago

Not ironic when you consider people don't always just vote for what will improve their present financial position. Wouldn't you agree that some vote based on their principles?

code_scrapping2• 6 years ago

She writes "Google treats badly black, queer women", but the story is "Google treated ME badly, and I'm a black queer woman". Also, I'm not comfortable supporting or empathizing with anybody so certain about their "stellar, fantastic, greatest in history" profile.

It would be interesting to hear what were the performance/carrier paths of those 300 people she hired, to understand whether they really just needed a leg-up. That would validate her hunch about untapped potential. On the other hand I'm afraid that it's likely that if they were not promoted it would be again blamed on racism, because if you have that one differentiator, it can be used in any situation.

(Yes, I'm aware that this comment is not going to be palatable to politically correct majority).

peteretep3• 6 years ago

but the story is "Google treated ME badly, and I'm a black queer woman"

My take-away from it was "Google recruiting is essentially unaware of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)"

code_scrapping2• 6 years ago

That is the most shocking part, but it's not the emphasis of the rant - it's the added value that gives the author credibility.

Please note that I'm coming from a 3rd world country, Google probably has my university well below it's radar, and I know people from there hired by Google (in double-digit numbers). So not being on the "A list" is quite normal for a vast majority of the world, yet you can make it happen.

On a personal note - I interviewed and got reject by Google, but I'm a white male so I do think they actually rejected me because of my performance and not because of my other attributes.

HuwytNashi_004• 6 years ago

This sounds like someone I would not want anywhere near my business either. What a disgracefully unprofessional reaction. And what an awful person to have to try to work with.

Imagine you land a well-paid cushy job at one of the best employers in the world, with the explicit task of recruiting other members of your race to also enjoy that prestigious privilege to the exclusion of others (not to mention the social prestige you gain with that power), imagine being informed that you intimidate coworkers and blaming them, imagine being told that you're difficult to understand and becoming irate rather than considering improvement, imagine being put on performance improvement plans and having your generous pay reduced and managing to blame racism rather than even considering you may have some shortcomings, and imagine after they've put up with this behaviour for years before finally having enough, you go and unleash a highly damaging expletive-laden rant on social media. I can't.

I don't want to hear about 'white privilege' ever again.

maccard• 6 years ago

That's not what white privilege is. From the thread:

Before my role existed, Google had NEVER, and I mean fucking NEVER hired an HBCU student into a tech role-

_thats_ white privilege. Even if the number isn't correct, if google isn't even looking in these places, by virtue of going there and graduating even top of your class, you have little to no chance.

There's definitely two sides to this story, but that doesn't mean you should dismiss systemic issues.

holomark• 6 years ago

Reading this twitter thread, I am embarrassed. On one hand, as another user noted, I am reluctant to take too seriously somebody who present herself as a the best at her job and suggest the racist culture of the company led to her sacking. This is both generalizing and impossible to check at first glance.

On the other hand, the absence of any tech hires from HBCUs is a potentially verifiable fact that is deeply concerning.

Is there any way to confirm this assertion ? The other ones seems hard to investigate (although just as problematic if they are true).

t_away_for_now• 6 years ago

She mentions that someone told her about being “intimidated” by her. Is this really something we shouldn't tell other people or should we work on it?

If someone has a tick accent that I can't understand or uses too much of slang that I cannot interpret without thinking about it or if someone acts as if they are simply a puppeteer of a persona(like if they bring up their identity all the time as if everything is about this persona definition but without personality) I also get very intimidated because I don't know what to expect at my encounters. I may intend to have a quick chat about something technical and it may end up me trying to understand what I did wrong to upset this person.

It's not about races or communities or genders, some people are acting as if they try to get upset, they are fishing for a chance to bring up their agenda or make everything about themselves.

In cases where there's no stigma to confront this kind of people, you can fight back but when this person is from a community that is ready to make it a big deal, it's really intimidating to confront people that make everything about themselves or their persona.

From the way she describes her standing point, I got the impression that she would be one of the people that I would try to avoid.

neilsense2• 6 years ago

The new thing is that 'professionalism' is a "white" thing and so it somehow suppresses other races. Somehow brown people like myself, Asians, hispanics, and most black people don't have an issue with it but for others it's a hill they wish to die on.

So now you have to understand slang of about 10 different cultures because speaking correct English is apparently oppressive. Also, being polite and not aggressive is also racist to other cultures, but not really other cultures, just a vocal minority of one culture. It's pathetic and it makes it really hard to Just Get Shit Done.

silicon2401• 6 years ago

It's not about races or communities or genders, some people are acting as if they try to get upset, they are fishing for a chance to bring up their agenda or make everything about themselves.

Behavior is often determined by incentives. Today one of the quickest ways to get positive attention, affirmation, encouragement, etc is to be a victim. For real victims who would've been stigmatized in the past, like people with mental illness, this is great. However it also means everybody has a low-risk/high-reward incentive to portray themselves as victims in almost any scenario too.

dariusj182• 6 years ago

I do find it humorous that someone thought their Baltimore accent was a disability. It can be quite difficult to parse, I don't think it would be too out of bounds to consider it a speech impediment.

Why Google Fired Me

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