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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."
I worked at Google NY..and there is no greater thought control bubble when it comes to anything non-tech.
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.
Who does he really think he is anyway?
An employee feeling that there was something wrong with the work environment?
Ezekiel 23:20
I admire the guy for standing up for the empirical truth or what he believes to be the empirical truth; probably knowing the potential consequences to his career.
Frankly; I hope he takes them all to court -- fights it out to the end and wins. I also hope he finds people to support him in this crusade and help prevent total ruin in his life caused by the brainless authoritarian dogmatic left.
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.
He filed an NLRB complaint, which is pretty serious. The state of California also has strong whistleblower protection laws, I imagine pushing forward with a complaint there would bolster his NLRB case.
IANAL but believe a sober analysis of his memo would be unfavorable for Google. The thing about courts is they are not mobs, the words there would be interpreted very differently.
"we are tolerant, strive for diversity, and value all opinions"
subtext:
"as long as you fit into our mold, hold the same opinions, and fit our diversity quotas"
They're biased and utterly regressive -- while suffering from the great western delusion.
tl;dr, dude's better off working somewhere sane.
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.
I am actually wondering of Google were the ones to pick the perfect time for it. They are being attacked by the radical feminists on a "wage gap" that may or may not exist at Google. Google gets to first look like they side with them, and later on use any legal case against them from this wrongful termination as evidence that the other attacks on them are toxic and bogus.
"His name was James Damore."
Google was foolish to fire him.
Yes, despite his memo's rather awkward inclusion of female vs. male traits, it was actually a memo about Google's intolerant culture - and they did a wonderful job of proving his point for him.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.