The Zhang Qincheng vs Google case: of pots and kettles

Hi guys. I've read a story that has been shared a lot on social media and I would like to offer my response. This involves a Chinese lady Zhang Qincheng who has quit a dream job at Google, claiming racist discrimination. Having actually worked at Google (as a contractor for a Google Translate project back in 2014), I would like to offer my perspective and response to what she has said. Obviously, Zhang worked in the New York office and I worked in their London, Paris and Hamburg offices and our time at the company never overlapped - so I cannot comment on what specifically happened in Zhang's case and I will be speaking more specifically as an Asian person who has gotten quite used to being the only Chinese/Asian/non-white person on the team for a long time. But to begin, let's take a closer look at Ms Zhang's case.

What is it like to be the only Asian woman in the team?

Let's start with this quote about the alleged racist abuse she received at Google and how it afected her: Working as a technical specialist in New York, Zhang said she was shocked when a white male colleague began mocking her about her hiring. “He said, ‘It must’ve been really easy for you to get your job because you’re an Asian woman and people assume you’re good at math,’” Zhang said. “It was absolutely stunning. I remember me just emotionally shutting down.”

Holy shit. And you thought it was the kind of "fuck off and go back to China you slit-eye noodle-eating chink" kind of racism? Let's deal with this case in a bit more detail. Firstly, what the white male colleague said was rubbish because a company like Google will have very rigorous selection procedures,. All candidates would be subject to a range of tests (technical and psychometric) to ensure that they have the right kind of skills for the job. A company like Google will receive so many applicants from top universities, so that is why they do a lot of their own testing in their recruitment process. If maths was an important skill set that Zhang needed for her job, then no doubt she would have been tested for that when she applied for her job. For her white colleague to have made that assumption - well, firstly, that shows how ignorant he is of his own company's policies and secondly, as if Google's HR department was simply going to make such a ridiculous assumption based the fact that Zhang is Chinese. Loads of Chinese people struggle at maths - heck, I'm one of them, I never liked it. For crying out aloud, I even struggle at Chinese when forced to use the language - how many more assumptions does this guy want to make about Chinese people and Google? In any case, it takes a lot more than just math skills to do your job well at Google - good programmers depend on more than just maths when they write code.

I'm Asian and I truly suck at maths.

So there's no doubt that the white guy said something stupid - perhaps he may be a technical expert who is really good at doing his IT-related role at Google, but his soft skills leave much to be desired and okay, he said something dumb. That's socially unacceptable but not enough to fire him: this is more a "Jane from HR will have a word with him" kind of situation. He is probably some kind of nerdy geek, possibly autistic, who has no idea how to talk to girls and that's why he said something so downright inappropriate: there is a big difference between stupidity and malice and that's why we need to learn to differentiate the two. But regardless of whether his motivation was stupidity or malice, I do question why her response was so pathetic. Why did she crumble like that over something stupid? Are you going to fall apart emotionally each time you encounter a dumb person or a hater saying something horrible to you? Or are you simply going to compose yourself and offer a witty retort? I would say something like, "oh dear, you have no faith in Google's recruitment methods? Didn't they test you before giving you a job or did they take one look at you and assumed that you were going to be great at your job because you look like a nerdy virgin who still live at home with his mother because a lot of programmers look like losers, just like you. Oh was that too insulting? I thought we have decided to judge people by their appearances. Like seriously, dude please, do you even look in the mirror before you leave the house in the morning?"

One on hand, yes I know HR departments are there to make sure employees are protected from racism, sexism, homophobia and all kinds of nasty bigotry - but can they protect you from stupidity? Well, in a worst case scenario, if Zhang was really that upset by what she heard, then she could have easily gone to the people at her HR department and they would dealt with the matter promptly. Instead of asking for help when it was available, Zhang fell apart instead. The saying, "you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink" comes to mind. There will be circumstances when people say nasty things to hurt your feelings, are you going to crumble and fall apart each time that happens, or are you going to be strong enough to deal with it because there isn't always going to be a HR department you can go running to for help. Let me give you an example I just had to deal with in the last 24 hours. British entertainer Bruce Forsyth died this week and this is the same week where there was that horrific terrorist attack in Barcelona - one of my friends on Facebook did a status update along the lines of "first the terrorist attack in Barcelona and then Bruce Forsyth passed away, oh can this week get any worse?" For the record this former friend wasn't some silly teenager, he was in his 50s.

I tried to tell my friend what he said was inappropriate.

So I couldn't resist: I commented that Forsyth was very old and in poor health - he had suffered a series of severe chest infections and had spent much of his year in hospital. Thus his death should hardly have come as a surprise at all, given how poorly he had been this year. That however, cannot be compared to the way so many innocent people were randomly and suddenly killed in Barcelona, when a terrorist drove a van at high speed through a crowded street. To even make any comparison between the two seemed insensitive and in very bad taste - it is one thing to have months to mentally prepare yourself for a very ill family member dying in hospital, it is quite another to have a family member killed out of the blue in the most horrific of circumstances. Anyway, so I attacked my friend for his status update and pointed out that Forsyth was a relic from the past: he also put his foot in his mouth in 2009 when he made a comment, condoning casual racism and was then forced to apologize by the BBC to keep his job. Now when your employer forces you to issue a statement like that, one immediately questions the sincerity of such an apology especially when what he said initially was an uncensored reflection of just how racist he was. Oh yeah, older people do tend to be a lot more racist.

My friend who was obviously a big fan of Forsyth then got really angry and went on a tirade attacking me personally, claiming that Forsyth was a legend, an incredibly well-loved celebrity and how he was so much more talented that I ever will be. It was a really angry tirade and by the time I had finished reading what he had written and got to the last line which was an expletive-laden about how he was going to block me on Facebook for disrespecting Forsyth, I clicked on 'reply' and got the message that the content was no longer available. I was disappointed that my friend had been so irrational - we could have had a dignified conversation about what happened in 2009 with Forsyth's racist comments, or we could have talked about the terrorist attack in Barcelona but instead he chose to lose his temper and attack me personally over my supposed lack of talent. I had only one simple point to make really: how talented I am (or not) has nothing to do with the fact that making a comparison between the two events this week was tasteless and doesn't in any way justify what Forsyth said in 2009. And even if Forsyth is considered more talented than me, how does that somehow make his racist comments acceptable? Would Kim Jong Il's amazing 'talents' somehow justify every decision he made? 

Can you reason with someone who isn't prepared to listen?

For a few moments, I felt frustrated at the way my ex-friend had reacted over the issue because I had thought that he was educated and reasonable enough for us to have dealt with the matter in a very civilized way, that we could still be friends regardless of how we felt about Bruce Forsyth. But for him to have attacked me personally like that and then blocked me on Facebook, well, he made it easy for me to dismiss him as a hater. As Taylor Swift sang, "And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate".Am I going to allow myself to get upset about the way he reacted? No, because I choose not to let him. My only frustration arose from the fact that I didn't get to tell him how irrational his response was and that he had lost the argument, but if that is the kind of person he really is, then was there any point in trying to even try to reason with him? Clearly not. There are times in life when you have to learn to walk away from a toxic person and say, "he's the one with the problem, not me and trying to engage him any further is a pointless exercise." We all need to enforce higher standards as to whom we take seriously, whom we listen to and whom we allow to influence us and be prepared to dismiss someone as an idiot or a hater with no more than a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders. That is the only sensible option because there's nothing to be gained by falling apart over something like that. After all, why do I need this guy's approval about my 'talent' especially since he said what he did out of spite? Surely the people whose opinion should matter are those who are paying me good money to work for them and the same applies for Ms Zhang.

Let's move on to the next part of Zhang's complaint about the lack of Asian female role models for her at Google. “I didn’t see a lot of women, especially Asian women, black women or other women of color in the executive ranks,” she said. “I didn’t see any opportunities for myself … The culture there is really discouraging, and that’s ultimately why I left.”

Now I am going to delve a little deeper into why Zhang flagged that up as an objection because I can see where she's coming from but I completely disagree with her. There are some people who will be very afraid to do something different or new and they will never be the first to do something. Take something like going on holiday - say you're going to Japan, are you the kind of person who will look up the most popular attractions to visit in the country and end up jostling with thousands of tourists there or are you happy to venture off the beaten path to discover some unknown gems? I'm not saying one option is better than the other but what I am saying is that the choice you make will reflect the kind of character you are. Some people will Zhang's position as a great opportunity - great, there are few black and Asian women in the industry, that is a gap she can fill and lend her female and Chinese perspective to Google. That means there is something unique she can bring to the table, a perspective that her white male colleagues simply don't have - that sets her apart and makes her unique. However, Zhang doesn't have the confidence to do that, she wants to see a Chinese-American woman of the same age before her succeed before she dares to follow in their footsteps. People like Zhang prefer to follow a well-trodden path: now that is more a reflection of her character rather than a flaw in the system.

Which do you prefer: the well beaten path or off the beaten track? 

I see this kind of mindset a lot in the world of gymnastics - some gymnasts will look around them and see what their team mates and competitors are training. They will then copy them, train the same kind of skills, "oh if everyone is doing that vault and scoring quite well at the competitions, then I can't go wrong if I do the same thing." Then there are the gymnasts who do the complete opposite - Soviet legend Natalia Yurchenko dominated in the sport in the period from 1981 to 1985. By 1979 at the age of 14, she was already performing a full twisting Tsukhara, the most difficult vault a woman could perform at that time - she could have been content with that, knowing she already had the goods to compete with every other female gymnast then who could also perform a good full twisting Tsukhara, but she decided she needed to do something so innovative and different she would shock the world of gymnastics. In 1982, she performed the Yurchenko vault for the first time at the World Cup in Zagreb (see video below). Nobody had done that vault before she did - that is why it is named after her. It set a brand new trend in vaulting: the vault apparatus was entirely redesigned to make it safer for gymnasts to perform the Yurchenko vault. Natalia Yurchenko was prepared to be first in the world to vault a completely new way. Nowadays, the Yurchenko vault is so passe I have even seen secondary school students in Singapore perform it. What was completely revolutionary in the 1980s is now commonplace today.

It is fair to say that not all gymnasts who do the most innovative and creative skills are the ones who win the gold medals, some gymnasts are quite happy doing the skills already performed by others but they have such perfect execution that they still win the gold medal. It takes a certain kind of gymnast to want to be the first to do something, to be that groundbreaking leader. It then boils down to the question: are you a leader or a follower? Are you someone who is a trendsetter or someone who is quite happy to copy others? In Zhang's case, it seems that she is the latter - she is a follower and without seeing a positive female Chinese-American role model in Google, she felt bewildered, uncertain and lost confidence in herself. Like so many gymnasts, she needed to see someone else do it first before she could allow herself to believe that she could to it. There's nothing wrong with someone taking that kind of attitude but for Zhang to then turn round and assert that there was something wrong with Google because she didn't see enough black and Asian women high up in the organisation, then that is really quite unfair to Google. It was clear that she wasn't the kind of person who would attempt to do what Yurchenko did - ie. be the first to break through the ranks, be the first to achieve something no woman has done before and be remembered for being the trendsetter? After all, what difference would it make if there was indeed another Chinese woman high up in Google's ranks? It was not as if she was going to get any special favours from one Chinese woman to another - like seriously, has she ever worked with Chinese people before? So rather than there being any glass ceiling at Google for her, the psychological barrier was entirely in Zhang's head.

Oh it is easy for me to judge Zhang for unwilling to take the lead, you may say. Well I am Asian, openly gay, an immigrant and I work in corporate finance in the UK and yes, the industry is dominated by white men - the vast majority of people I deal with on a daily basis are white men. Women and minorities are very rare but there is no deliberate effort to try to keep us out of the business. People in business take a very pragmatic attitude towards the issue of recruitment and it can be summarized by a famous saying by Deng Xiaoping: 黑猫白猫抓住耗子就是好猫 - that translates literally as "it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, it is a good cat as long as it can catch the mice". I have never ever faced any discrimination on the basis of my ethnicity or sexuality - I have however, been discriminated against for the lack of experience or expertise. Sure my employers make a lot of demands when it comes to my work performance, but as long as I deliver they are happy to pay me well for what I do. Really, I don't care if I see anyone Chinese or Singaporean being successful at my niche area of corporate finance - unlike Zhang, this doesn't bother me one bit. I am far more concerned about the more practical aspects of my everyday work as I am always under constant pressure to deliver good results.

This is one aspect of the banking industry I really like - I can forget that I am Chinese. Heck, I'm a complete banana in any case: yellow on the outside, completely white on the inside. And my employers really don't care about my ethnicity or cultural background as long as I can make money for the company. In any case, with a name like Zhang Qincheng, I am wondering just how assimilated she is at Google? After all, if you want to get ahead in your company, you have to make a genuine effort to fit in. No you don't have to become best friends with everyone in the company, that's never going to be possible, but at least you should be able to foster cordial working relationships with everyone there even if you don't have that much in common with them. It does take two hands to clap and I don't know how much effort Zhang has made to try to fit in, but having worked for Google in London, Paris and Hamburg (back in 2014), I can appreciate that this is never going to be easy for her, especially if she didn't grow up in America. But the way I saw it, I accepted this contract to work on this project with Google, the onus is on me to fit in with their culture there - the onus wasn't on them to make me feel welcomed there. I'm not a paying guest at some five star hotel - quite the opposite, I'm the one being paid good money to work for them. So whilst they're paying me, I'm their bitch. I must make the effort to fit in - did Ms Zhang get that memo?

Was fitting in easy whilst I was working at Google? Yes and no - it surprised me. Of the three teams that I worked with, I found the London team hardest to work with, whilst the Hamburg team the most fun to work with. I think with London, it was the start of the project and everyone was really quite stressed and tense. I wasn't thinking very much about fitting in at that stage, given that my home was a short walk from where I was working - so I had that mindset of leaving the office and going back to my own life once I had finished work. By the time I had moved onto Paris, I was making far more of an effort as I was keen to impress my French colleagues with my language skills - but perhaps because my French was so fluent that they just thought, he studied at a French university, of course he can speak French. Besides, I knew Paris extremely well having lived there had I had friends in Paris, so I wasn't that attached to the people from work. Finally, in Hamburg, I had never been to Hamburg before, didn't know anybody in Hamburg at all and my German isn't as fluent as my French but I still made a valiant effort to speak in German and not English with my colleagues. My German colleagues appreciated the way I was trying so hard to speak German and they reciprocated with such warmth and friendliness. Is it any coincidence that the place where I fitted in the best was the place where I had made the greatest effort to fit in even if my German isn't as fluent as my French or English? The correlation there doesn't surprise me at all - you reap what you sow. So sometimes you want to fit in and sometimes you don't feel the need to - the choice is yours.

Now, let's move on to one last quote from this ridiculous article about Zhang and this is the part where I feel she is playing the victim's card. However, over time she began feeling “disposable” and not appreciated as an engineer. She claims her situation worsened due to the fact that most engineers and managers were male. “It’s just these little daily aggressions that really add up over time,” she said.“Having a lack of people who look like you in general is demoralizing.”

Ms Zhang wanted a leader who looked like her?!

Oh dear. Zhang had her delicate feelings hurt because she wasn't appreciated? Oh dear, she sounds like a typical millennial. That is the problem with Chinese people - I am going to blame both Ms Zhang and her Chinese culture. There is an unwritten contract between Chinese parents and students - the way to impress your parents is to do stunningly well in your studies: be that straight A student who goes to Harvard - just like Zhang Qincheng. Now I'm sure Zhang had the kind of academic record that would be every Asian parent's wet dream and no doubt her parents would have been delighted with what she has achieved - all the more so if her parents' friends' children didn't make it to a university like Harvard. However, when you work for a company like Google, you are surrounded by the very best talents in the county - so what if you're from Harvard, you're nothing special as everyone there is just as brilliant. I would have thought that Zhang would have already experienced that at Harvard where she was already surrounded by equally brilliant students - but there was a simple way she reassure herself that she was better than or at least as good as them: there were tests and exams. But when you're working in a place like Google, it is a lot harder to quantify your success: this is a demanding wok environment. No one is going to hold your hand, babysit you and manage your delicate feelings. You are expected to be quite grown up about it, make the effort to fit in and rather than expect your managers to come round, pat you on the head every so often and say, "well done, I love what you're doing." Oh please, you're not in primary school.

I can see exactly where there is a huge cultural mismatch as I was brought up in a very traditional Chinese family (and subsequently rebelled against anything my parents stood for). In Chinese culture, it is considered a socially unacceptable, even rude to boast about your accomplishments. We are taught to be very modest rather than shout about how great we are. This is changing of course, thanks to social media, where young people are given a chance to showcase their skills, talents and accomplishments online and I would have hoped that as someone who worked at Google, Zhang would have adapted to this new environment. If you are too modest about what you have achieved at work, then guess what? All your hard work is simply going to go unnoticed because there will be someone else out there carefully making sure his work is noticed and he is going to get all the high fives and the credit. If you're quite happy to be the modest person who can happily get on with your work without that kind of fanfare, then fair enough. But if you crave recognition, credit and appreciation from your management, then you have to stand up and claim credit for the work you've done (even if that breaks every social/cultural protocol your Chinese parents have ever taught you) otherwise you are simply not going to get their attention. It then boils down to an issue of office politics and clearly, Zhang lacks the soft skills to thrive in such an environment. Thus the problem then clearly lies with Zhang, not her former employer Google.

Do you know how to fit in when placed in a new environment?

Furthermore, why is she making such a big deal about "having a lack of people who look like you in general is demoralizing"? Has she ever worked in China or Singapore?  That is the dumbest thing she came up with in the entire interview and I don't know why anyone hasn't pointed that out yet. Just because someone is also Chinese or female doesn't guarantee that they will be nice to you. I have spent 2 years 4 months in the army in Singapore where the vast majority of people there were Singaporean males of Chinese ethnicity - I was surrounded by people who looked just like me, especially when you shaved our heads and put us in the same green army uniform. Guess what? There was a lot of nasty bullying, a lot of animosity, a lot of back stabbing and I had to work with a lot of people whom I despised. The fact that they merely looked like me wasn't helping at all - what would have made a difference was if they were actually nice to me, or at least weren't going to stab me in the back. That's the problem I have with Asian people who grew up in the West - they have never actually lived/worked in an Asian country before so they think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence when really, it is just as bad. My sister works in a Singaporean company where the vast majority of her colleagues are Chinese and the amount of nasty office politics going on is insane. Why do people like Zhang assume that they will get along with other Chinese people better than white people when Chinese people are just as capable of being nasty to you, bullying you and stabbing you in the back as the next person from America, Argentina or Angola.

Finally, Zhang has already moved on to work at Spotify but why this interview, why now? If she had been a victim of a more vicious racist attack of the "fuck off back to China you slit eye chink" then fair enough, raise hell and sue them. But what she has described sounds more like the micro-aggressions that come with the territory: you want to work with a bunch of IT geeks, don't expect them to have the best soft skills and be any good at social interactions. Yes they are going to say awkward shit to you sometimes that can come across as inarticulate and inappropriate but so what? It sounds like Zhang herself is equally guilty of lacking in social skills in her inability to fit in, so there's an element of a pot calling the kettle black here. If she insists on playing the victim's card, then she will always put the blame on others rather than take any responsibility for her shortcomings. I do think that slagging off Google like that is a really bad move on her part - if she ever wants to change jobs again, a gatekeeper could easily find that interview and realize, "woah, this woman stabbed Google in the back by running to the press rather than try to resolve this internally first through HR, this woman is a loose cannon. No way we'll hire her, she could cause us a lot of trouble." She had everything to lose and nothing to gain by doing this interview, but if she was rational, well, then she would have not done this in the first place.

Zhang has nothing to gain from this article.

So that's it from me on this issue. What do you think? How should Ms Zhang have dealt with the situation at Google? Do you think HR managers should go out of their way to help people like Ms Zhang who may be brilliant in their respective technical skills but lack the soft skills to work well in a team? Do you see her as just a woman playing the victim's card or as a brave whistle blower? Or, does she have a valid point? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.