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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.
California is a Right to Work state, so they don't really need a reason to fire him.
There's a big difference between firing someone without a good reason, vs. firing someone for an illegal reason. There are plenty of examples for the latter: you can't fire someone because they got pregnant, or reached a certain age, etc. Not saying that's the case here, but if someone can show that the reason for their termination was illegal (e.g. an internal management memo or meeting notes discussing "we need to get rid of all these old people!") then yes, they most certainly can sue for wrongful termination.
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.
Discrimination in hiring and promotion, even if it's the left-approved kind, is still discrimination and is still illegal.
It's not whisteblowing (he didn't claim illegal activity really), and while you can say he was discussing working conditions, another group of people claim that it represents harassment, and the latter argument seems likely to prevail. He might have had a better chance if he didn't outright claim that women were inherently not cut out for those jobs and instead just stuck to complaining about diversity being too highly prioritized and that the culture was suppressing any criticism of that.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Right to Work means an employee can be terminated without cause. It does not mean an employee can be terminated for a cause that is illegal. Wrongful termination lawsuits are not prohibited in Right To Work states.
I've just read his document. I must say, that was a very rational appeal to Google to bring more harmony and freedom into its culture.
I must also say I see no hostility to anyone whatsoever. All he said was "Let's get away from this cult and be as productive (through enabling each and every Google employee to reach his full potential) as we can be".
And he was fired for it. And THAT is exactly where the hate for SJWs comes from.
For a long time I was kinda miffed that I don't have the background to have a chance to work for Google. Now I'm kinda glad... I don't think I would have liked that environment very much.
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.
Since we are talking in the subjunctive tense...
Google may have found itself in trouble for not firing James Damore. He contributes into the peer performance review system there, and he had openly expressed an opinion that women, as a category, aren't on a par with men with respect to coding. That presents a liability to Google from a different direction.
As disgusting as one may find this "opinion" piece, either engaging in a discussion or admonishing him to keep his expression out of work (if there's a reason to fear disruption of the work atmosphere) would have been much wiser.
Not because That Folks can now depict themselves as victims (srsly?), but because this would be Just The Right Thing.
Just because one side is wrong doesn't mean the other side is right.
Gotta love that unbiased, non-judgmental journalistic addition. I mean, of course Mr. Damore was in the wrong, right? How dare he internally reveal concerns for company direction... especially with wrong ideas.
By the way, all of you defending what he wrote, you're wrong too. Remember, everything is racist, everything is sexist.
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
All along, this was just his retirement plan. Why continue working with people you hate when you can get paid millions just to stfu and go away? He is probably already shopping for boats.
The weirdest thing about all this are the critics who label Damore's firing as Orwellian while overlooking the greatest data aggregation exercise in human history.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
California has also clear laws regarding unlawful employment discrimination. Writing a memo pushing forward the agenda that diversity policies in the workplace is a bad idea will not fly well in courts.
Since 1996 the State supreme court has repeatedly upheld that affirmative action in the State is illegal in any institution that works for or with the State on any matter.
"His name was James Damore."
Maybe he was contemplating being transgender and wrote it from the woman point of view. There is nothing in California that says a person can't be Trans-fluid. Oscillating state of "female / male" Bipolar on the west coast.
The whole screed...
Scientist after scientist are coming forward saying that his paper is well thought out, well researched, well written, and in line with current scientific understanding.
...read like a child who was upset that things weren't the way he thought they were all along
No, thats you guys, who keep lying about whats in the paper, and keep slandering the person that wrote it.
I wonder if Slashdot's poster logs can be subpoenaed to show that all you anonymous people are working for Google on Googles behalf slandering the person you wrongfully terminated. Pretty sure that "I was just following orders" is not a defense against slander.
"His name was James Damore."
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
The may be in trouble for firing him, but they would have been in trouble, too, if they didn't.
Or can you tolerate someone against diversity and hostile towards women when you're under scrutiny and already in trouble for not being diverse enough and having a workplace climate hostile to women?
All that is left for Google now is to guess which side will be cheaper to settle with.
bickerdyke
And Damore was really stupid to write a 10 page or so diatribe
When did he do that?
Do you work for Google? Are you lying for Google right now? Why are you lying?
"His name was James Damore."
California is a Right to Work state
Right-to-work law prohibits compelled employees to join a union. You're thinking of at-will employment.
Every big company just makes these things go away. Google is going to reach into the couch cushions, pull out a few million bucks, and give it to the guy. It's all about risk management; I'm sure they want this whole thing to disappear so that they're not dragged in front of the media every single time a court date comes up.
In my opinion. they were right to get rid of him. Regardless of the content of what was published, you don't start a highly politically-charged fight, drag your employer into it, and expect to keep your job. Especially when the CEO has to cut his vacation short -- I'm sure that was the last straw. I've been nothing but professional in my career, and there have been _plenty_ of times I could have unloaded on this or that in a public forum but chose not to.
And besides, aren't we beyond this "women are inherently different" thing? Being in IT, you do work with a lot of guys and there is a definite gender gap. But, part of me thinks women are just being rational and avoiding what can be a stressful, thankless job if you're in the wrong environment. It's not all, or even the majority of men I've worked with, but I have worked with some very vocal men who border on the MRA level. But when you get down to the root of the problem, most of them are unmarried/unmarryable, or worse, on their second or third wife and paying large amounts of child support. From what I've seen, that's where a lot of the bitter complaining comes from, and if I was getting 50+% of my salary siphoned off each pay period I'd probably be bitter too.
... of his critics at Google...
I have news for you, and you probably don't want to hear it. If we put every one of his critics there who supported his firing into a big room, you could swing a dead cat in any direction and not hit someone who is less than 200% more certain that they are absolutely following the righteous path in burning this little heretic. In fact, the actual Spanish Inquisition was kinder and more compassionate to real heretics than they are; it gave you a chance to be spared punishment by confessing and repenting. These people don't. You could crawl over broken glass while telling them how right they are and most of them would still treat you as less than fully human.
... was sending out what he wrote immediately, rather than sitting on it for a few days, re-reading it, editing it, and having it reviewed by a trusted friend, and re-writing it before unleashing it. At least it reads that way to me. I think much of what he had to say has validity and should be discussed, both at Google and in society at large; but he said it in a manner which lacked diplomacy and tact, was poorly written, and suffered from contradictory logic. The lad was onto something, and might have been praised and promoted instead of fired if he had turned down the self-righteousness by an order or two and hadn't gone off half-cocked.
I hope Google at least makes the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff in what Damore wrote, rather than dismissing the whole thing out-of-hand.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It was not a scientific paper nor was it based on scientific papers and it certainly did not use any scientific methods.
He provided citation after citation to peer reviewed science all the way through his well written (as you admit) document.
Furthermore, scientist after scientist are coming forward saying he is right about the science.
Do you work for Google? Are you lying for Google right now? Why are you lying?
"His name was James Damore."
Google is a big company now, they're not a startup anymore. Every big company I've worked for as part of the mandatory sexual harassment training talks about creating a hostile work environment. Even if it's not overt, like some half drunk salesman putting the moves on the receptionist, if someone feels uncomfortable within the "reasonable person" standards, the company is liable if they know about it and allow it to continue. I think that's where this stems from...their lawyers would rather deal with one wrongful termination suit than a class action brought by anyone who had contact with James Damore.
Large companies are risk-averse; most of the places I've worked with have dealt with harassment claims by immediately getting rid of anyone that they had any sort of evidence on. If it ever comes out in the open that someone wasn't immediately disciplined for any bad behavior, you get the situation that occurred at Uber, or what happened with Mark Hurd at HP.
I got out of coding because I was sick of being treated like an idiot, only to have my work appropriated by the same dudes. I was sick of inappropriate boob stares and fumbled flirting, and questions about my girlfriend.
I did love coding, but the bullshit got too much. I work in family medicine now, which is way better just for the sake of actually being respected.
This whole discussion is a bunch of guys just trying to justify themselves with moral arguments, when the reality for women in tech is shit.
> (He has a Ph D from Harvard)
Incorrect. He lied on his linkedin profile, he only has a masters degree.
James Damore, the fired Google engineer who wrote the now-infamous memo on diversity at the company, has removed mention of PhD studies in biology from his LinkedIn profile.
The removal comes after Wired writer Nitasha Tiku confirmed with Harvard that Damore has not completed his PhD. Damore did complete a master's degree in systems biology in 2013, Harvard told Wired.
Damore's biology studies became a crux of a right-wing argument that he had credibility in claiming biological differences between men and women could account for lacking gender diversity at Google.
http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-removes-phd-studies-linkedin-2017-8
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.
irrational consumer = source of dollars
In business, ignore that equation at peril of the continued existence of your business
All, as much as some might like to think they are changing the world, until that change demonstrably does happen, beware for you are crunchy and good with ketchup... And there is NO right to not be eaten.
He took a risk and got handed his head, for now, proving the risk was bad. Good experimental evidence there. Anyone care to test for repeat-ability? Just so we can get a good statistical sample...
I did in fact read the document. It was literate, well written, misogynistic tripe, in my opinion. It certainly did not demonstrate consideration (did he think about them) of points of view other than the one he was putting forward.
Also in my opinion, the entire discussion shows how easily literacy is confused with smart, critical thought.
It's how we get these clowns in Washington (both sides)... Very literate and able to use that to sway people to react rather than respond.
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.
I'm seeing there's lots of support for diversity of sex, skin color and national origin in the Valley, just not for opinions or viewpoints. Troubling on so many levels..
I agree that this is capitalism, and I certainly agree that Google has the right to fire Damore (even as I personally find that action repugnant). That being said, political correctness can still be repressive, socially speaking. The state is not the entity that exercises power within the country. For example large corporations also wield power in a capitalist system (particularly those with $500+ Billion market caps, and particularly those with a history of employment price fixing and collusion).
He made Sundar Pichai cancel his family vacation. Having the CEO cancel a vacation does tend to lead to firings.
Someone wants to make trouble (and Damore may well be part of this commentary), but at the end of the day it can be interpreted that Damore's writing can be a disruptive element in the workplace. "An employee does not have free reign [sic] to engage in political speech that disrupts the workplace". Creating undue anger or contention in the work place can certainly be disruptive and detrimental to morale. That alone will cover it. Also, the memo appears to have been the breaking point, but not alone the root cause. Documentation showing his skill is not on par with his peers or the standards of Google can turn a "retaliation" into something overdue, and needed to happen before the work environment was affected. All employers have the right and duty to protect their work environment from harmful elements. I think this is simply a tool to pressure Google into a generous settlement, but if it goes to court, aside from Google being able to drag this out to the point it bankruts Damore, they can simply state they were protecting their good standing employees from a harmful element, who was already on shaky ground anyway. I'm not sure if this applies, but if this is an "at will "employee I think they can be fired for any reason but I'm not a lawyer nor is it clear he was an "at will" employee.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
since when is it my job to help disadvantaged groups? I've got a list of disadvantages, too, just like everybody else; to think someone else or society at large is on the hook to make my life easier is a symptom of a weak mind in that it makes one a dependent not on one's own merits, but on others' guilt-induced generosity
I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does, Damore told the New York Times.
According to Dan Eaton, an attorney and ethics professor at San Diego University, the engineer certainly has grounds for a case on two fronts. First, federal labor law bars even non-union employers like Google from punishing an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions, Eaton writes.
And second, because the memo was a statement of political views, Eaton says Google may have violated California law which prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action.
An international corporation with armies of both lawyers, Google knew all this. They decided to take their chances with state and federal law anyway rather than stick up for one of their employees and risk public backlash. Thats an incredibly telling decision from a company that has mastered everything from artificial intelligence to self-driving cars.
In short, the tech titan is scared. Not of losing talent. Not of legal fees from the pending litigation. And not of a potential settlement. No, Google just doesnt want to stir up outrage from the left and so they squashed speech.
Read the article summary. They're in serious trouble. California has a state law that forbids retribution for political opinions, something they clearly did here. On top of that, you have an employee talking about working conditions, which is protected by federal law. Finally, it's been revealed that some managers are keeping black lists of employees for the political opinions, which again runs afoul of California law. Hello class action lawsuit.
Then, on to Damore's point. Specifically, the science backs him. Here's the link:
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/08/male-female-brains-are-just-a-little-different.html
I think you mean "at will" because California definitely isn't a right to work state.
In an at will employment state, you can fire an employee for cause or for no reason whatsoever but you can not fire one for a bad reason.
You can fire an employee because you don't like how s/he ties his/her shoes but you can not fire an employee because they complained about unfair treatment.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well you certainly appealed to a few of the mods. Tell us again about all these "lowlifes." I mean, I'm assuming you have some firsthand knowledge of that.
You're right that there's nothing anti-capitalist about Google's move. Your quick character judgments, though, make it pretty evident that you're not applauding capitalism on display; you're applauding some guy you don't agree with receiving punishment... Just like an upstanding moral person would, I'm sure.
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
The contradiction is just in your head then because you're not accurately representing what the author is saying.
He's making arguments based on statistical distributions, not individuals or "biological suitability". Men on AVERAGE differ from women on AVERAGE in terms of behavior, how they think, and ultimately what they value in terms of jobs and occupations. That doesn't mean that women can't be in STEM or whatever, just that they are naturally less inclined to want to be in STEM because they TEND to be more people oriented rather than object oriented, or that they are less inclined to be in leadership positions because they place greater value on jobs with more flexible hours. Again, on average. That doesn't mean that there are plenty of women who don't value STEM fields, working long hours at the expense of raising a family, etc.
It's like you don't understand how averages, distributions or populations work.
I've just read his document. I must say, that was a very rational appeal to Google to bring more harmony and freedom into its culture.
An appeal maybe but not a terribly rational or well argued one. It was a stupid approach to a problem that he doesn't really appreciate and he very clearly does not understand the politics involved.
I must also say I see no hostility to anyone whatsoever. All he said was "Let's get away from this cult and be as productive (through enabling each and every Google employee to reach his full potential) as we can be".
No that is NOT all he said. And if that is all you took out of it then you are politically naive. It never occurred to you that people might try to couch their (unfortunate) ideas in terms that seem more palatable?
I must also say I see no hostility to anyone whatsoever. All he said was "Let's get away from this cult and be as productive (through enabling each and every Google employee to reach his full potential) as we can be".
It basically is an argument against what he perceives as so-called "political correctness" in pursuit of gender equity. He tries to be more clever than that but that's what he's saying. He claims to be a "classical liberal" but it's pretty clear that he is not based on his arguments. He makes population arguments and then assumes these must apply on the individual level.
And he was fired for it. And THAT is exactly where the hate for SJWs comes from.
If you hate someone because they are fighting for equal rights in the work place then that says more about you then it does about them. He was fired because he embarrassed the company and its public image with a poorly written and ill considered rant that can easily be interpreted as sexist. Even if his intentions were pure (and it's not clear they were) it was a stupid approach to the problem and his getting fired should surprise no one. Did he really think writing that paper was going to result in meaningful change or that it contained some special insight which had occurred to no one else?
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?
Not true. The traits that make me more likely to choose something are often very different than the traits that make me good at something.
For instance, I'm an overweight gentleman who has vanishingly little ability to delay gratification when it comes to food. Because of those traits, I rarely choose to shop at the grocery store, and instead opt for fast food on the way home. However, when I do shop at the grocery store, I kick serious ass. I find the sales, I buy the healthy stuff, and I'm super nice to the person who watches the self checkout stations. Therefore, the same trait that make me less likely to shop at the grocery store does not at all negatively affect my suitability for it.
I also would like to see the droves of scientists supporting him.
For the record I think that he made a mistake and the droves of google beta males "Scared and shaking in their seat" and women so distrust they had to call in sick is pathetic.
But I doubt there is much science to prop him up on his single biggest mistake which is publicly announcing that some number of people you have to work with are genetically less fit for their work.
Google made a point of acknowledging that some of the points in the memo discussed working conditions, and specifically said that those parts weren't why he was fired. The bits where he said that women weren't as good at dev work or leadership weren't about working conditions, and those are the bits that got him the sack.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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.
It's not generally a "protected class" for employment purposes in the US, but it is in California... and might be in a few other places.
I know political opinion/creed etc is a protected class for public accommodations or services (eg, hotel stays, restaurants, etc.) in Washington, DC, for example.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I'm still not seeing Google take any action towards the real problem here. What are they going to do about the hostile environment they have made for conservative employees?
Nothing. This is California, they hate conservatives here. Hating on conservatives here is expected and rewarded, never punished. The state government is less likely to stand up for a conservative being mistreated than the KKK is for a black person. For an example of this see how they treated the people who beat up Trump supporters. They were essentially saying violence is bad but we see where you were coming from and it was so just and deserved that we'll give you a pass. Just don't make a habit of it.
But let's be clear here: we are talking about statistical differences, not biological determinism; many women are more aggressive, have better spatial reasoning skills, have higher IQ, etc than many males. It is true in a sense that women in general can beat men in general in any field (and the converse is also true). But if you are talking about salary statistics and job demographics, you also need to talk about group statistics for cognition, IQ, and reproductive strategies.
Google isn't doing themselves any favors with this. Their ideological distortion of science may play well with immature college graduates who don't know any better, but it's not going to go over well with more mature employees. In fact, to people who have gone through making career decisions, turning down promotions, raising kids, etc., such sex differences are simply a matter of personal experience. In leaked internal surveys, it looks like more than 1/3 of employees generally agreed with Damore. And his firing certainly makes a mockery of Google's statement to tolerate other views and want to engage in open debate.
Uh.. according to (approximately) 100% of the people who actually read the memo instead of reading deliberately-misleading summaries of it (believe it or not, some people have portrayed the memo as him saying women are poorly suited to be engineers, whereas not a single person who read the memo can find anything even loosely resembling an indirect implication of that), he wasn't wrong about anything. He just talked about how different people have different opinions and different biases, and professionals need to be able to live with that instead of freaking out like Republicans at a LGBT parade.
And that's common sense. Don't act like a Republican. Sounds like Google is full of people like that, apparently operating under the amusing label of "alt left" which, now that I think of it, isn't a bad description of Republicans. Hmm. Hey, self-labeled "liberals," I think you might have more in common with the other guys than you think. You basically agree with Republicans on every single "big picture" aspect, what the relationship between citizens and government should be, how tolerable it is to be intolerant, the worthlessness of freedom, and the need to centralize all political power. It's just the little things that you disagree with them about. But you behave just like them.
OTOH, California's "you can't fire people" law is pretty fucking stupid, so even though this guy did nothing bad and got a bum rap, it might be good if Google got away without legal consequences, so that the stupid law gets undermined a little more (and maybe invalidated in court, if we're really lucky but I don't see how that would happen).
I suspect he'll settle out of court with Google and work instead on a book deal. He's obviously stirred up a lot of interest and attention; might as well vent more formally and make some cash off it.
It's also in Google's interest to not have it go to court to avoid bad publicity.
Table-ized A.I.
that's how it's done.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
But I'm abandoing Google. Search engine changed. Primary email, changed. Browser, about to be changed.
Numerous Liberals left the Democratic party because they have become a party of extreme Leftists promoting ideas more in line with Marxism than text book Liberalism.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If a company fires you for filing a complaint with the government, for cooperating with the government in an investigation of the company, or for bringing lawsuit against the company, it qualifies as retaliation. However, Google currently denies this, they say they were not informed of his complaint or lawsuit before deciding to fire him. So while he has other paths to a successful lawsuit, the retaliation angle might not be very successful.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Nowhere in the paper is he stating that.
(he spends way to many pages on pointing out the difference between males and females, stating the obvious)
his complaint is about google ignoring reality and giving minorities better treatment because google thinks forced diversity is best.
it's like out of 10 job applicants picking the 1 woman because you need a woman for diversity reasons.
thats the discussion
And note that we are talking about AVERAGES precisely because progressives are complaining about differences in AVERAGE salaries and AVERAGE employment rates.
Not only that, the EEOC will often take up a minority discrimination case, so you have a company defending itself against the deep pockets of the Federal Government.
The EEOC will sometimes take up a discrimination case. Most people who face discrimination and look for help do not have the EEOC pick up their case. Instead they ask the EEOC to help, wait a while, have the EEOC say no, look for a plaintiff's lawyer, have consults with one or two, and ultimately the lawyer usually doesn't decide to take them on as a client because the lawyer would have to bankroll the litigation and it's in some way not the perfect case for them.
Seriously, I've known people who have faced discrimination to make the "hostile work environment" stuff you hear about seem like child's play who will never get their day in court.
Discrimination cases will sometimes be effective even for white males, but they are much less common. There is also a lot of discrimination in juries that affects what justice is available for a variety of other matters.
Real lawyers write in C++
Tell me again, which is the ONE wrong side?
Talking as a person living and working in Belgium where the laws are written so they are on the side of the employee and from 50 FTE, you will have a Union representative.
You can fire everybody here without a reason. The thing that will differ is how much you will have to pay him. The standard used to be (New law now, so not sure about the amount) 3 months per 5 years. So he would have gotten at least 3 months pay. His rights do not end there. If he would have felt any wrongdoing in the process, he could go to court and ask for more.
If he would have gotten it then or not depends to be seen. He could have done that with or without the help of a Union.
It could then be that the court decides against him. That would mean in the worst case that they won't need to pay those 3 months, but very unlikely. Most likely they would say that the company was in the right and he got his legal amount.
If they rule in his favor he could get extra months. It could also be that the company gets extra warnings and fines if they did something wrong.
From what I have read till now, I would say that he would easily have been fired as the trust between the two parties has clearly been tainted and the is now a trust issue. Much depends on if it would have been addresses, but I would say he would get just his standard severance pay.
Obviously I am not a layer, let alone one that is specialized in the matter.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not unless he is making a crime public. Instead he wrote an internal memo discussing legal (but controversial) management practices.
Just because it makes you *feel* a certain way doesn't make it a crime.
Now he may well be covered under laws intended to protect union organizing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It does not matter if I agree with the guy who was sacked, we live in a world where the corporation is within its rights to do almost whatever it likes with its workers. I note that it is a "leftist" concern to protect workers rights. Capitalism makes money, it does not make society, we give that to the politicians to arbitrate.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
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.
Or biology makes genders more attracted to different roles. Women can be excellent car mechanics, but there aren't nearly as many women who choose to be as there are men. This could be evidence of bias, but isn't necessarily. In all likelihood, there are some biological explanations for differences in interests that are reinforced by bias; it doesn't have to be an either/or situation.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Why would he?
Was he writing a scientific paper and trying to advance the state of knowledge in a field? If so then yes you would try and put forward alternative explanations.
Or was he writing an argument in a debate about something? In which case you would put forward your best arguments with your best evidence (and if you are honest you would not advance arguments you know are invalid). You don't try and argue for the other side as well - you leave that to the other side. Sometimes, you might put forward an argument for the other side so you can dismantle it, but usually that is straw manning and bad form.
Was he really trying to advance the state scientific knowledge, or was he just advancing an argument?
I'm not sure about "droves", but these experts seem to mostly agree with him.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
"...underlying assumption that biology makes genders more suitable for different roles..."
this is true, how many example would you need to be convinced?
and it's not that there's not ~100 suitable women in google's upper mgmt.... more to it than that; let's just say that you have 100 suitable women for a position but they're competing against 10,000 suitable men; high chance that the position will be filled with a man not because of unfairness, but because each candidate is competing against 10,099 others; it just seems unfair because of some arbitrary bucket the candidates are placed in to; instead of gender lines, put candidates in buckets by race, religion, nationality, shoe size, fucking anything and it can be made to look unfair
do the 9,999 men that didn't get hired also get to cite unfairness? or maybe they just weren't chosen, simple as that
and now comes the standard disclaimer to head off the intentionally(?) obtuse: this does not mean unfairness doesn't exist; you are free to fix the world as you wish; don't require me to participate
It's like you don't understand how averages, distributions or populations work.
He's that peasant in Life of Brian who says "She turned me into a newt!....Wot, I got better!"
He and others of his ilk on the Left just want witches & warlocks to burn, and when there is a lack of such handy, Leftists simply create them by accusing anyone who says/does anything they dislike.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Flat Earther's and Young Earther's can lay out all kinds of "science" behind their nuttery, it doesn't make them true either.
Google has created a hostile work environment for non-liberal white males.
There should be legal recourse to prevent further discriminatory behavior.
He provided citation after citation to peer reviewed science all the way through
Look at the end of the document. See the References section? No, you don't, because (unlike any scientific publication that you will ever read) it isn't there. His citations are not written as citations, they are hyperlinks. Because of this, it's difficult to inspect them all and judge their quality, but the vast majority of the ones that I clicked on went to Wikipedia (which is not a peer-reviewed publication).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Don't be^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Be Less Evil
That's the first time I ever saw a search engine get paranoid!!
Everyone is missing the big picture.
I wasn't surprised when OJ got off. Nicole get it right "OJ will kill me and he will get off because he is OJ SImpson."
When it was I watched the George Zimmerman trial in the background. The trial came down to this. Only one witness saw a part of what was happening. What he saw was one guy pounding another. He tried to get him stop by yelling and the guy wouldn't. Medical evidence should that Zimmerman was beaten up, Martin was not.. Whatever you say about the appropriateness of the law, the law and the facts were on Zimmerman's side. The verdict should not have come as a surprise.
Look at the big picture and you won't be surprised.
First off. The article says he is a whistleblower and some people here take exception to that. They are correct for thje wrong reasons. A whistleblower is someone who takes a complaint outside the workplace.Damore kept it in house. That however does not change the law. He was bringing ptential illegal activity to the attention of management.
Second. I won't be surprised if Google wins a court case. Juries can be fickle.
Third. I won't be surprised if Damore won. I think this is more likely, though by how much, I do not know. The liked article is a rehash of an oped piece written by a practicing San Diego labor lawyer. I would say his perspective on the case is more informed then most of us.
Fourth. There are five things that people are ignoring:
In short there are a lot of things that are game changers that we don't have any idea what they are. Who distributed the memo to most of the Google staff? What are the terms of the forum he was using? What happens in their diversity classes? Was he having performance problems before the memo happened?
It's only when the case gets t o court that we will see what the answers are.
I also don't think the guy wants to settle and Google can't make him.
So pull up a chair and get the popcorn ready.
Agreed. This guy is either going to get a payout or Google is looking at a protracted lawsuit. There is ZERO chance this goes to court.
What is this sock puppet shit? I asked you to post an example if it. The posts you complained about had no mods at all, still don't.
You do know you can click on the score to see moderation applied to a post, right?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Oh, you are so big...anonymous COWARD.
Can you guys stop feeding the eco chamber for this guy already?
The overreaction for and against this guy is plenty enough reason for firing him. Sorry if reality is too hard for some to take. Wake up and look around what's happening, you cannot be this blind.
Google isn't a governmental or public company, he didn't "whistleblow" anything (for it to be categorized as whistleblowing it needs to be revelations of illegal nature happening inside the company), Google interpreted his article/screed/document/whatever as being in violation with internal policies, he overstepped his position and send the message everywhere inside the company.
I'm not sure if he's involved in leaking the whole thing externally, but he became a liability the moment the message left the building.
Him staying as an employee became unsustainable. Furthermore, there's a metric ton of criticism in his piece that we really can't say for sure if it's justified or not, but it's a piece of vilification that exposes just one side of the equation from a very personal and particular viewpoint. It's a PR and HR disaster, and people were fired for way less than that. Do you guys not follow cases were CEOs were put out of their positions for one line Tweets and inept Facebook posts? Several of those weren't even criticizing the company they worked for, but it put the person in an unsustainable position inside the company.
Set your bias aside and think about it. There's a good reason Google does not discuss matters of policy and how it works on their diversity program in public. It's exactly because the company wants to avoid all sorts of overreactions that are happening right now because of what this guy wrote. The boycott that is being promoted by tons of people is a direct consequence of his actions, even if it has more to do with him being fired. On the other side, there were calls for firing him up before it happened. There's a whole ton of people taking what the guy wrote alone in faith, just because he build his article well, taking a single point of view as the truth of what happens inside the company, often exacerbating it, and throwing all sorts of unfounded accusations against the company as a whole because of it.
His piece, by itself, brought political polarization around the company, something that I'm plenty sure Google was trying to avoid at all costs. It undermined a whole ton of money, work and effort that Google must've spent in recent years.
Do you really know if Google is, internally and for it's employees, an extreme leftist paradise? Do you really know if dissent is shut down there without discussion? Specially those that are being so extremely adamant against Google in the past few days, think about how much trust you are putting in the testimonial of a single person. Has anyone else inside the company come out in support for his words? Is it really because now you know everything that's happening inside Google or is it just your confirmation bias because you already didn't like the company anyways, or the ideas James is going against?
Google won't be in trouble for firing the guy exactly because of posts just like this one. Google can show the cause and effect as to why they needed to let the guy go. If you think you are helping his case with posts like this one, you are not. Private companies are not public forums. They have policies in place with what sort of discussions are allowed to be made of matters that happens inside the company, they have proper channels to voice your opinions, and they keep strict control going through PR not to let disasters like what's happening right now spiral out of control.
Stop trying to stretch this story. It's over. If Google gets in trouble for this, fine, come back with something useful to discuss. This is just clickbait and sensationalization.
It's like this... I was talking to a girl who was getting her degree in womans studies. She said she wanted to find out how to get more women into STEM programs. I asked her why she didn't get a STEM degree. She then told me to shut up. Now I am sure she could more than handle the work of a google engineer, but she doesn't WANT to be a google engineer, she thinks OTHER GIRLS should be engineers. That is the mindset that no matter how much you offer free training and special treatment you give, won't change the fact that they don't want to to begin with. For any reason.
Google may not have a choice if the feds/Trump want to send a message.
1) It's not unsupported; there's plenty of high-quality work showing personality differences between men and women (on average!) that are consistent across many diverse cultures, and the scientific evidence for this is much stronger than that for unconscious bias tests, 2) programming was a completely different job at that point, and 3) saying that men and women may be attracted to different things, and that this partially explains the gender gap in CS does not preclude bias as a contributor.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Ah, so the reason you're able to be such a comparative loudmouth around here with your socialist drivel is that you get elite posting privileges that cause your comments to immediately rise above those from the rest of the commoners? The irony.
Score 1 is the default for logged in users, and +1 for high karma.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Lol, a girl told you to shut up and therefor your prejudices are true. That logic of the alt-right is nothing more the schoolyard butthurt.
The fact you assume I am prejudiced, and that you are defensive and condescending when talking about the topic proves what the article is saying. You cannot even bring up objective reality without automatically blaming the "White patriarchy" for being oppressors. I am anti-alt right, but because I can identify difference in the sexes on an average, I am an alt-right A-hole. You caught me. Now you can dismiss me without even considering an idea other than your own.
Score 1 is the default for logged in users, and +1 for high karma.
Which, as I'm sure you're well aware, does not apply to you. Take your own advice and click on the score of one of your own posts, which shows a starting score of 2, and +1 for high karma. Compare that to my last post, which (as with all other logged in users I've checked) shows a starting score of 1, and +1 for high karma.
That some subjects are too taboo to openly discuss in the US.
Regardless of how much data exists to back up or justify a claim, you dare not speak the words lest you get crucified for it.
Free speech is really only free as long as what you say coincides with popular opinion.
Here's one scientist, interviewing James Damore and going over key points of the memo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You are right. Sorry, I didn't notice...
This is actually kind of annoying as, for example, I don't really want this post appearing above the default threshold and attracting the trolls who systematically mod me down when they see me.
I'll use the feedback link, see if I can get it fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nietzsche was absolutely batshit insane, though
Is the quote batshit insane? No, it's a reasonable warning written in poetic fashion, so you're just engaging in ad hominem.
It is however fair to say that the alt-right
The "alt-right" is an overused boogeyman phrase. The origin of "alt-right" came out of Richard Spencer's movement for white nationalism. It has since been generically applied to anybody that goes against the "progressive" left.
seek to destroy existing morals through the apparent paradox generating mental judo that can be boiled down to "by not accepting my intolerance you are intolerant."
Discrimination in the form of quotas, "diversity" hiring practices, and dogmatic political positions is not "tolerance". The "progressive" (in actuality, authoritarian, racist, and sexist) left then goes through mental judo that any opposition to this Marxist ideology is "intolerance".
The correct response is to recognise this for what it is, then punch the fuckers in the face, thus also neatly answering the question "is it right to punch a Nazi?"
Thanks for demonstrating your fascism.
California is an "at will" state. If you're employed at will then you can leave when you like and also can get fired at your employer's whims with no justification required.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
70% of STEM students being female in Iran is consistent with observed trends that sex differences are larger in freer, more developed countries and smaller in less egalitarian ones.
What you had to do was often easier back then too, as was the office culture. Different cultures in different fields is consistent with the evidence that on average women like people more, and men like things more. He even suggested trying to make programming now more collaborative where possible.
He was saying that biology is part of the explanation, and lamenting that Google's culture didn't allow a frank, honest discussion of it, and instead made people feel unwelcome or ostracized if they tried to talk about it.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Did you really post two very similar comments with the same, incorrect points in response to me? I'm flattered, AC.
On the off chance you're a different AC, there's a consistent trend that sex differences are smaller in countries and cultures that are less egalitarian, like Iran, which accounts for the apparent disparity there. The more affluent and free a society is, the larger sex differences tend to be. Funny how in one of those tribes, men are better at the task, while in the other tribe they're equal. You'd normally expect a complete reversal if society was the only cause.
I disagree; it certainly wasn't easy back then, but the things you needed to do were often less complex.
No, it's not irrelevant. He says bias is a partial cause, but biology likely plays a role as well. There's plenty of real science out there, not just anecdotes.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
But since he is a white male no law protect while males against such discrimination. I secndon him. All those victimization and diversity is a whole bull... just to get easier job entries and acces easier to high paying jobs. How come they don't get accepted just using the same standart as everyone else's? I am black give me easy money, I am woman, give me easy money.
Your contention is that being lazy is a biological trait
I didn't say that at all. My example had nothing to do with biology. I was merely saying that some traits alter your inclination perform a task without altering your ability to do perform that task. Also, I didn't say anything about laziness (I said something about delay-of-gratification).
This case makes me feel even more politically isolated. Trump is the worst president ever in every category. Congress is barely functional. People on all sides increasingly just subscribe to blanket agendas and fail to consider the details. I am on the left as far as general thinking and agenda goes, but there is way to much behavior like we see here among this group. It's obvious that this wasn't an a reasonably presented argument about the companies policies rather than the "anti-diversity rant" it has been made out to be.
I dunno, maybe you're so far up your own ass that you think people should notice minor title changes, and tell the difference between real illogical SJWs and pretend SJWs? If it was an attempt at sarcasm, it needed bigger cues.
Capitalism doesn't really allow this to happen for a prolonged time. A company that wastes money on hiring and keeping people who are a waste of money ceases to be competitive and gets taken over by one that is.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Looking back, it's now easier to believe you actually didn't notice. Looks like it just started on July 31 (here), for no apparent reason. In any event, now you see why so many people thought you were sock-puppeting lately.
I think the site admins have been trying to deal with the trolls moderating certain users they don't down systematically. It's breaking the site and turning it into an echo chamber.
And this has just made it worse.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Geez... let's try answering this seriously, no really!
So you want to continue your passive-aggressive, serious, not serious, bullshit games? Ok, I'll play along and take you seriously, because there are SJW idiots that make just as ridiculous arguments that do take it seriously -- perhaps even you.
however, believing something to be profound because it sounds profound is not a sign of high intelligence
It's a reasonable warning written in poetic fashion, regardless of who wrote it or under what circumstances.
I've taken the liberty of fixing that for you.
You've taken the liberty of strawmanning, because you lack the intellectual integrity to engage in honest debate.
prejudice is naturally present in everyone
Indeed, but quotas are not the answer. Prejudice comes in many forms, by the way, not just the pigeon holes of race or sex. But a monoculture of political thought doesn't bother the identity-politics pushers. Not only do they not take "affirmative action" to correct it, they actively seek to enforce it.
QED. Personally I have not read any Marx, apart from Harpo.
You personally do not have to have read Marxist ideology for it to exist or for you to be following it. Engage that neocortex.
An interesting fact: contrary to the views of the far right in the US, the Allies were not the fascists during WW2 and the Nazis were not the oppressed, surprisingly it was the other way around.
An interesting fact: if you run around endorsing and/or committing thug violence while tarring any dissenters to your ideology with a nasty label for the "other" to justify your violence, you just might be a fascist.
IBM famously posted 'Think' signs all around their buildings
Apple famously posted 'Think Differently' in their stores and in advertising campaigns.
Google will soon be putting up signs that say 'Think Like We Do'.
Progress!
Ken
There is no other system of Justice that matters.
And yes, in America, you have to PROVE something. If you can't prove it, then you can't convict or otherwise punish.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
His memo could be considered whistleblowing
You don't fire whistle blowers. You put them in jail, remember?
I see the reasonable points many others have made here about why he should not be fired, even if (hypothetically) everyone agreed his post (while carefully worded), may have propagated discriminatory views.
However, I would think many companies have in their contracts a clause that says if you do anything that causes embarrasment to the company, that's a fireable offense. I can understand this, I think, even though I would indeed worry that it could have happened to me when I was working at a big company, and would love (in theory) to have had some kind of protection to not lose my livelihood from it (aside from complete silence).
I think my last company had a social media policy, that somehow extended to even personal twitter accounts - forcing us to say that we worked for that company in our bio, but that our views were our own, but still making us responsible for any fallout. Not sure if enforceable.
The thing that really does need addressing is the people whose knee-jerk reaction to "They're different" is "You're saying they're inferior to straight white men!" (strike descriptors as needed) since that reflects their own concealed bigotries.
It's important to remember that the spread of cognitive differences does not follow stereotypes--and there's sets of things that men typically suck at compared to women. Some of this is very possibly due in significant part to differences in how they conceptualize the problem...
That last thing is the key to why you want an actually-diverse group approaching the problem: You can expect them to find a good solution faster in most cases. Think of it as an extension of the observation that to somebody who only has a hammer, most problems will look like nails.
Most female car mechanics I've come across are very good at it, too. I suspect that it probably has to do with nearly all of them going into the field pretty much entirely because they enjoy it for its own sake, which has a tendency to result in somebody being good at it. (And, well, from my gearhead friends, apparently becoming a car mechanic is about the only way to get access to some of the equipment 'til you have the money to buy your own. I live in an area where, if you could work out the legal and security issues, you could probably make quite a bit of money by having a garage where people can rent time and equipment so they can work on their own cars.)
Given the audience here are tech nerds, not squishy-stuffs nerds: I don't think you'd even manage to get a proposal that involves manual screwing with prenatal hormone exposures to the ethics review board. You'd have to prove that there is a benefit to society that would sufficiently outweigh the harm done to the people in the study. You generally also are expected to have put some thought into how to fix what you break--or, at least, lessen the consequences thereof. Given that we don't really have a clue here, it's only going to be passed to the ERB if they're in need of a good laugh.
What we know about exogenous gondal hormone exposure during incubation can be roughly summarized as 'Bad Things.' We're only starting to get some idea what is going on during pregnancy--you'd probably get as close as you ever could ethically to this by data mining a properly designed study monitoring womb conditions so you can establish the requirements for an artificial womb. (This is taking into consideration the issue of funding the effing study, and honestly such a study could be data mined for a lot of other things that you'd never be able to do directly. And, well, it needs to be done if you want a safe, effective artificial womb.)
More diverse teams may be more productive. I can think of reasons why that could be so. We know that adding a toxic member to a team can destroy productivity; why couldn't adding a selected person without really good technical skills improve productivity?
Anybody got a cite on this?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Here are 4 of the scientists he quoted talking about what he wrote. Good reading if you aren't an ignorant bigot.
http://quillette.com/2017/08/0...
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Since you deleted and did not offer any reaction to the main salient point
I've responded to all your bullshit.
You're just fuelled by your own hate and are repeatedly pressing what you see as hotbutton triggers trying to get a reaction.
No, that's just your strawman and you're projecting. It's not about hate, it's about being against discrimination. This memo was not against women, it was against quotas, a blindness to gender preferences and science, and an intolerance to differing political thought. It was about meritocracy and treating people as individuals, along with a nudge that some accommodations for women in the workplace could be made for mutual benefit. But you don't want to have that discussion, and go right to "punch a Nazi".
You see, the point is that challenging intolerance does not make you intolerant
Your kind defines your own version of "intolerance", call people a Nazi if they don't agree, and then use that to justify threats or act of violence. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro, Maduro, etc. All you authoritarians are the same -- if you don't get your way, resort to violence.