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Google May Be In Trouble For Firing James Damore (inc.com)
Google fired engineer James Damore after he wrote a 10-page document about "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber." taustin writes from a report via Inc. about the potential legal trouble the company may face from firing the "anti-diversity" engineer: Whether Demore is right or wrong, whether one agrees with him or not, Google may have legal trouble for firing him. Employees are protected by federal law when they discuss working conditions with other employees (and this was an internal memo). His memo could be considered whistleblowing, which is also protected (and it is very clear that he was fired as retribution). And, in California, political opinions are protected in the work place as well. Just because one side is wrong doesn't mean the other side is right.
They won't get in trouble because he is a white male. Second they will simply offer a settlement, and then silence him. This will go away.
Whistleblowing implies that he was disclosing potentially illegal activity that google was engaging in. Having a code of conduct that forbids creating a hostile work environment for women is not illegal, therefore he is not whistleblowing.
We've gotten to the point where Google thinks that asking tough questions and seeking answers is less valuable than ideological conformity. Even without legal repercussions, this is not a good look for Google. It undermines the idea that tech is a bastion of the enlightenment.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
The only people calling him the "anti-diversity" engineer are those that haven't read a word of his memo.
True, right up to the point your opinion conflicts with the majority. Then you'll be shut down, marginalized, and removed.
On the one hand this memo is not the best thing ever to be written... it contains the same moral and intellectual certainty that afflicts programmers generally (and many on this site), and I just generally reject that sort of certainty, especially from someone young and sheltered. Any discussion that tries to lump massive groups of population and assign traits to them is going to fail, and it's also going to harm individuals who are assigned to that group who don't fit the traits assumed. (And you can't get around that by liberally sprinkling the phrase 'on average'.) A policy towards trying to break the human urge to hire copies of yourself should be assumed to be a good idea, in my opinion. You don't know what other sections of society will bring so it's probably a good idea to have representation from them. At the same time diversity of opinion should be encouraged, but a lecture to the entire company about how some groups are generally going to be less good at the job is more than just opinion, it's actively causing other people problems.
On the other had, firing him doesn't feel like the right thing to do at all, atleast not until he's proven that he's such a dick that nobody will work with him anymore (if that was to be the case). He's young and certain, and I think wrong. But that's not enough of a reason, if he's doing the job and open to rational debate then I can't see why he should be pushed out so quickly.
Actually sucker this is the pinnacle of capitalism. This guy made trouble in the workplace and they sacked him for not having the right attitude. If you build a multi-billion dollar corporation you too can exterminate lowlife employees for having their own ideas. Instead of which you are lowlife who supports right wing propaganda about freedom - which is the freedom of big dogs to eat little dogs, just like happened to this guy.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Another one that failed basic reading comprehension. Nowhere in the memo he states "...that women were inherently not cut out for those jobs...". The ignorance is strong with this one.
In fact, he states the opposite.
From the memo itself:
I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
And reinforcing:
I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
Don't spread lies. Read the whole thing before spreading lies:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf
I must agree with the AC. A quote would help. I have read a version posted on a news site and I would not bet on it not having been redacted.
What I read, though, did not contain any such thing. All he said was that on average, women and men show different traits and needs and instead of acting like that wasn't true Google's culture should try to play into the strengths of women and then accept the ratio of women working there as a probable equilibrium.
He also said to not only focus on competition as that is a primarily male trait. He more or less proposed that some men who are really focused on status might go elsewhere and make room so to speak.
IMO he never, ever said anyone (especially not the whole group. He emphasised judging each individual according to their strengths and weaknesses) was unable to do X. He just said that the current culture acted contrary to science and oppressed anyone who disagreed with that notion.
And I really have no idea why my first post was labelled flamebait :D.
Or can you tolerate someone against diversity and hostile towards women
Nobody should tolerate that.
These arent things Damore did or believe, however, so what are you talking about?
"His name was James Damore."
In general, if you write a '10 page manifesto' about anything, you are probably going to come off as a nutjob and probably won't go well for you professionally.
Solved. It's now called an "essay". So there's no problem.
You should try to come up with something better than things described with negative-sounding words are bad. It's really a poor argument and a poor thought process.
His falsifiable claims were well supported by the science
Even if we concede that to be true (and I do not), that doesn't mean that his conclusions from that evidence are correct and his conclusions are anything but scientific.
By firing him, they've created a hostile work environment for empiricists.
This was not a dispassionate empirical argument. I've read the memo in its entirety. This was a rant against what he perceived as ideology that he did not agree with. He's entitle to that opinion but don't insult my intelligence by claiming it was some masterpiece of empiricism.
If you think that believing the science is sexist, then call me a sexist, but it's also a political statement to want to make decisions based on the science.
This wasn't a scientific paper. It was a political opinion piece which casually referenced some cherry picked "evidence" in an effort to seem more credible.
They're actually the ones on worse footing here. He was challenging their hypothesis - that men and women are mentally equivalent in terms of interests and thus the "correct" amount of men and women in tech jobs should be 50/50. He provided empirical evidence backing up his assertion that men and women are different, thus forming the basis for his moral and intellectual certainty. I've never seen any evidence supporting their hypothesis that men and women are equivalent, yet somehow they're morally and intellectually certain they're right?
And the enemy is us (Google ...Remember Don't Be Evil?).
In their effort to encourage inclusiveness and tolerance, they have become intolerant and exclusive. No doubt others have similar misgivings, but are keeping their mouth shut now that Googles intolerance of dissenting views has been exposed. Google has become the very thing the claim to stand against.
Seems to be a common theme in the SJW Universe.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
can you tolerate someone against diversity and hostile towards women
You, like so many others appear to have based your options on what others have said about what Damore wrote and not by what he actually wrote.
Damore's memo was not anti diversity. Nor was he hostile in it against women.
He _did_ call into question the means being used within Google to promote diversify as being potentially illegal (affirmative action _is_ illegal in the state of California), and that all sexual diversity in the workplace is not automatically because of repression and that the means being used to combat sexism were counter-productive and/or scientifically inconclusive.
Should you disagree, give quotations of the sections of his memo that say explicitly that he is against diversity and hostile to women.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Yes he did:
"We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I've seen it done)."
That is exactly what he did. The people (including a lot of journalists, sadly) saying he claimed women weren't capable of tech work simply haven't read what he wrote. They've been writing their responses based on what others said he wrote - others who also didn't read what he wrote. You know, the echo chamber he complained about?
On the contrary, this was one of the best written commentaries on the topic that I've read, and covered a lot of the logical flaws which have bothered me about political correctness over the years. It's missing a few others I've seen (assumption of a zero base state, assumption that the null hypothesis is true by ignoring contrary evidence, ad hominem through villainization, etc), which the mass media is now shoveling out in droves.
It was amusing/sad how much butt-covering he had to do to ward off ad hominems by people who will assume if you don't support their ideology, you must oppose it. e.g.
"I hope it's clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority."
Without having to repeat things like that, it probably would've been a 7-8 page manifesto. But it was for naught - the PC crowd accused him of it anyway.
While California says you can't be fired for HAVING a political opinion, you can be fired for expressing it.
In the rest of the US, your boss can walk in and fire you just for posting a Pro-Trump picture on your personal facebook page. Alternatively, he could just ask every Republican to raise their hand and then tell everyone who didn't raise their hand, "You're fired".
California banned this practice.
However, your boss can still fire you for wearing a Trump hat to work or sending an internal email that advocates for Hillary Clinton.
Whistleblower Protection
You are a pretty weird whistleblower if you complain internally about a public practice. I cannot imagine anyone EVER considering this a case of whistleblowing.
That would be like an Apple engineer sending around an internal memo about the small battery in their new phones, and then people calling that "whistleblowing". You can't blow the whistle on something that everyone knows about!
Right to Discuss Working Conditions
May be viable. Unfortunately, the memo didn't really discuss working conditions. It discussed business practices. Working conditions addresses how the business practices have an impact on the employee. He was discussing how he felt they were wrong-headed and misguided. Those might be fair assessments, but they are not addressing HIS working conditions.
Did he work more hours because of the hiring practices?
Did he get less time off?
Did it impact him in any demonstrable way?
They won't get in trouble because he is a white male.
They won't get in trouble because they technically have done nothing wrong. They fired a guy for not having the right political view point which, as I understand it, is not protected in the US like it is elsewhere.
The ironic thing is that they are missing the entire point of diversity which is that a disparate collection of world views leads to finding better ideas and solutions to problems. To put it in terms familiar to Slashdot it's like the Federation and the Borg and Google just showed they are the Borg.
It's illegal in California.
Further, they fired him after he complained about hiring practices, gender bias, etc. within the company. That's retaliatory, and that's illegal everywhere.
The cherry on top is that his claims count as whistleblowing because it's illegal to have hiring, assignment, and overall treatment favor race, gender, age, etc.
Checkmate.