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Fired Google Engineer Says Company Execs Shamed and Smeared Him (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report, in which the recently fired employee has been interviewed: James Damore, who until Monday worked as an engineer on video and image search at Alphabet's Mountain View, California, headquarters, said he initially shared the 3,300-word memo internally a month ago. But it was only after the memo went viral that company leaders banded together to make him an outcast, he said on Bloomberg TV. When he initially circulated the memo, "no one high up ever came to me and said, 'No, don't do this,' even though there were many people who looked at it," Damore said. "It was only after it got viral that upper management started shaming me and eventually firing me." The memo, which was leaked to the public over the weekend, argues that conservative viewpoints are suppressed at Google and that biological differences between men and women explain in part why so few women work in software engineering. Even if someone in Google management had agreed with some of the arguments put forth in his piece, they wouldn't have felt safe speaking up, he said. "There was a concerted effort among upper management to have a very clear signal that what I did was harmful and wrong and didn't stand for Google," Damore said. "It would be career suicide for any executives or directors to support me."
and gets tens of millions from Google.
I worked at Google NY..and there is no greater thought control bubble when it comes to anything non-tech.
and every PC snowflake he sues. He did nothing wrong & he is being slandered by just about every "news" & social outfit that is willingly mischaracterizing his memo.
Everyone knows, rule by witchhunt creates the best workplace and products.
People look back on history condescendingly about the Salem Witch Trials and "how could people be so ignorant." Then you look at what's happening right now. There's some biological / social urge to "Weed out the aliens/different/toxic entity" within an organization.
There's no difference. There's no moral high ground. The same justifications only a different set of victims this time around. History repeats.
The hippies that used to protest their clean cut bosses are now the ones crushing the minorities. History repeats.
He might well be right. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't have seen this coming. There are things you just don't say or do, even if you think it's true. Google had no choice but to fire him and distance themselves; the cost of not doing so would have been much higher.
Who does he really think he is anyway?
An employee feeling that there was something wrong with the work environment?
Ezekiel 23:20
At-will employment refresher - IF YOU ARE A DICK WHO SAYS CUNTY THINGS, YOU MIGHT GET FUCKED, BRO. That's not Obama's fault, snowflake. Stop crying and STFU and do your damn JOB that you're overpaid for! Bitch!
If this is the way you are responding then you obviously didn't read what he wrote, or notice the way he wrote it. He's not a dick who says cunty things. He's an engineer who followed data to conclusion and presented it with sources. And he's not crying about it. People are ASKING him about it.
An engineer who was forced to sit through non-technical things.
When it went viral the big G had to fire him because not doing so would have made them look bad in the public eye.
I wouldn't really care much if it had been an extremist and sexist piece but it isn't.
You may or may not agree but it's a reasoned document.
Alas, it doesn't really matter, what mattered is that it got viral and many piece of news about it made it look much worse than it really is, they said it said things that are just not there. Many people who read this terrible reporting was outraged (as I would be if it really was what they claim it is) and then the man was lost.
It's sad we've gotten so uptight about certain topics that merely suggesting something different to the accepted narrative can get you fired.
You uh... didn't actually read his letter, did you?
Because he's got a Ph.D in biology. ... and worked as a scientist at... MIT.
And his memo is also backed by four different scientists who reviewed it.
http://quillette.com/2017/08/0...
Goddamn science and their facts backed by peer-reviewed research!
I don't care what it says, don't write a manifesto for work unless it's part of your job. This guy's an idiot on multiple levels, says idioto
Honestly, he's saying exactly the opposite. "When he initially circulated the memo, 'no one high up ever came to me and said, 'No, don't do this,' even though there were many people who looked at it."
There's a lot of talk about free speech, but it sounds like Google was okay with him expressing his opinion, and didn't try to silence (or shame) their engineer in any way whatsoever -- for at least a month, up until it became public. If we're going to really listen to what the engineer is saying, then Google actually is tolerant of different viewpoints under most circumstances.
Read your own fucking link, asshole, that isn't what it says.
One guy says it isn't a "rant" and that he found many responses on twitter that are "little more than snarky modern slurs." No science, just some dube-bro bullshit about how random twitter responses being banal means that google isn't serious about diversity.
Next guy says, "Alongside other evidence, the employee argued, in part, that this research indicates affirmative action policies based on biological sex are misguided. Maybe, maybe not." OK, if your sexist bullshit is "maybe, maybe not" supported by what you claim, that's exactly the same as it not supporting the claim. He goes on to say,
OK, so he's not supporting it at all, he's tearing it down.
Third guy is very supportive, and goes on an extended political rant without ever addressing the controversial parts of the memo. I do agree with him that if you cherry-pick individual phrases, you can limit yourself just to the true ones. Easily.
The fourth person, honestly I'm not convinced she actually read the memo. I suspect she read some out-takes and was responding only to those. She seems to think that the debate is over the existence of average physical differences, rather than the appropriateness of using those differences to categorize people in the workplace. And she seems to also think that the memo was written in support of individualism, which is odd.
Exactly. His response shows why it is not reasonable to attempt to "educate" or "reform" these sorts of employees. If you have one, just fire them and reduce the damage. And when you're hiring, make sure you're not hiring one of these clowns.
Misogynists would make the same statement regarding women complaining of legitimately unfair treatment. Congrats, you're no better.
Education and reform of people who are despicable
ah yes, the 'basket of deplorables' argument.. ..and progressives wonder how someone like trump could've possibly been elected..
Except it has nothing to do with "at-will" work. In most States, it is required to take action to prevent what he did. (creating a hostile work environment based on categories prohibited from being used for workplace discrimination)
In fact, one of his arguments was that current socjus policies help foster hostile work environments because they don't reflect reality. Then there's the broken assumptions that come from using 'class' to judge individuals...
It is not a synonym for oppression. It has a narrow, clear meaning, and you're not allowed to do it at work based on a bunch of categories that you must be aware of to work with others.
We all discriminate every time we make decisions, based on all sorts of discriminators. The problems start when irrelevant ones are used to make assumptions. This is probably the crux of the problem with current social justice policies. Under the guise of fighting against irrational discrimination, it imposes it using the same flawed reasoning.
Claiming it is your opinion doesn't shield you at work; keep opinions on those subjects for your personal time, work at work and politic somewhere else.
Perhaps google should also fire its VP of 'diversity' so she can also follow this good advice and get a real job. Then the company can focus on building a culture of merit.
1. Racism and Sexism have historically have not been considered political or religious speech.
2. Whistle blowing a policy to increase diversity, that people seem to know about, isn't whistle blowing.
Google is all about culture. It isn't for everyone, it isn't for me. However is an employee seems to be at odds with its culture, they may get fired. Not because of their views, but by actions showing defiance to such culture. Employment at will means you can get fired if you just not a right fit. The law put exceptions for a detail list of things, Race, Religion, Gender. Sexual orientation.
However posting a manifesto opposing a policy that the company is trying to incorporate can get you in trouble, what is worse, he made it public and the media got its hand on it. So if they keep him, it is validation that Google is sexist (As that was main thesis), so we will fire him, and just get complains from people they wouldn't want to hire anyways.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
He created a hostile work environment in much the same way someone who admits they're a Red Sox fan in a Yankee friendly bar. And not even someone wearing a Sox hat or jersey, just a guy having a personal conversation in a corner booth being asked what his favorite team is.
He wrote a post in a internal forum used to discuss ways to make the company better that discussed issues with their hiring practices and methodology being used to up certain groups numbers. He proposed solutions that he believed would better attain the stated hiring goals and that he also believed would be more natural and both increase attractiveness to the target group but also be more fair to everyone else at the company.
In response to this memo being reposted outside of the forum (and not by him) and then terribly mischaracterized by people that made no attempt to understand it he was physically threatened and several employees made public statements about wishing him harm and/or wanting him fired.
The ONLY people making Google a hostile work environment are the people overreacting to what was generally a very neutral, fairly well researched memo. I'm sure most of the people at Google don't even care and there are probably a significant number that agree with him but seeing how the extreme PCers are acting about this they would never speak up and dare have the mobs wrath turned on them (which also happened to be a point he made).
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
At-will employment refresher
Funny how liberals only appreciate the liberty corporations have when thought criminals are getting it. Similar to how Facebook shouldn't be investigated for grooming a news feed because it's a private corporation and has a right to privacy. At any other time the corporate personhood from which these rights are derived makes the exact same people foam at the mouth.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!