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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.
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.
Let's be clear... he was fired for exposing their $265M boondoggle: https://www.axios.com/googles-...
How many targeted scholarships and local/urban school improvements could have been had for $265M?
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
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
He was free to express his opinion, they were free to fire him.
Does he want government intervention or a union or something?
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.
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.
He distributed it to executives asking for criticism. They ignored it. He posted it on an internal social media page asking for the same stuff.
It wasn't offensive, and scientists in these fields are backing him up. He offered more creative solutions to improve diversity efforts based on biological difference and evolutionary psychology. Google's efforts for diversity have been a $265 million dollar flop.
https://www.axios.com/googles-diversity-efforts-are-making-little-progress-2470784457.html
Oh, he's also got a PhD in biology.
There are things you just don't say or do, even if you think it's true.
Sometimes there are principles worth fighting for -- such as liberty and pursuit of the truth against evil and deception.
A great man once said "Give me liberty, or give me death," and then he died, but if he hadn't said those things,
then we would all be slaves today; instead of a people with some freedoms, among the most important of those,
the freedom of speech, and the ability to speak our minds without fear of being executed or having our livelihoods
destroyed by an angry mob, whether that be the government or a collection of angry rabble, or Facebook users, etc.
"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.
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!
"There are things you just don't say or do"
That's exactly how we got in this mess. That is EXACTLY how things got so PC that you can't even present well cited data in a logical manner any more if it could be (mis)construed to mean that anyone is "marginalized." And If anyone actually read it, they would know that the guy isn't anti women or anti diversity - quite the opposite actually. He's only a skeptic of the methodology which has lead to this exact situation. Because some things are too taboo to talk about. It's ALL related.
BTW, the company had asked for feedback on company policies, and specifically asked for critical/controversial topics. They shouldn't have shamed him and defamed him after he did what they asked. Also, it's obviously a reactionary move to the sudden outcry, which implies it was FINE before. There's so many ways that they were wrong, even if they may or may not be legally in the right.
How is this whistleblowing ? That's only when illegal activities are going on, no ?
In the State of California, affirmative action is illegal.
"His name was James Damore."
He might well be right. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't have seen this coming.
He was certainly right - at least to whatever extent the science was right. The core of his memo was a survey of the current scientific literature, with citations. Of course, this stuff isn't physics, but it is repeatable measurements with known (if limited) predictive ability.
He's pretty young though, and a PhD, so I suspect he was quite naive. "Should have" seen it coming, sure, I agree, but understandable that he didn't. An engineer addressing an unknown by studying the science behind the problem, and using that as a basis to ask some obvious questions. Sort of what you want an engineer to do.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yet another dipshit who refuses to read the actual 10 page memo and still has the false belief that everything they read on a site labeled "news" must be true.
Nobody claimed the guy was a whistle blower, oh bearer of the tiny straw man. They claim that he was slandered and wrongfully terminated.
I read the memo, unlike you. IANAL, but believe he's got a pretty solid case. The Stalinist tactics being used by many are being illuminated.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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
Part of this memo was a claim of illegal hiring practices (i.e. benefiting women because they were women and not merit). Part of it was illegal discrimination based on political views (protected in California and obviously meant to protect snowflake liberals who can always make a firing about their IDENTITY rather than their performance but it will be fun to use it against the creators in this case).
Part of it is grey-area discrimination that may not be "illegal" all on its own but when combined with the above actually illegal actions can elevate the "crime" to include more serious things like retaliation, defamation of character, hostile work environment, etc. It all sort of snowballs into a scenario that could be easily defined as whistle-blowing (see actual illegal actions by Google).
You can add a fifth highly credentialed scientist in the field this is about that reviewed it... line by painstaking line.. in an interview with him.
"His name was James Damore."
In the State of California, affirmative action is illegal.
It is only illegal for the government. It is not illegal for private companies such as Google.
Or, even if you're not a "dick who says cunty things", but just somebody presenting facts, backed up by statistics, that hurt somebody's feelings.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
It is only illegal for the government [wikipedia.org]. It is not illegal for private companies such as Google.
Unless the private company accepts Public dollars as a contractor, such as Google.
The law specifically includes all State contractors.
"His name was James Damore."
I find it ironic, that conservatives, that have ranted and raved against any sort of labor protections and the NLRB, seem to be rejoicing at pushing a NLRB complaint.
If this is not an example of conservative white male privilege, I don't know what is.
I find it ironic that liberals rejoice when the science concerning global warming is settled, but rant and rave when science that doesn't fit their narrative is presented.
http://quillette.com/2017/08/0...
If that's not an example of hypocrisy, I don't know what is.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
You should repeat that a few more times, I'm not certain everyone saw your virtue signal.
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."
Well, it depends on which truth you're telling, see... Some truths are more acceptable than others.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Equality of opportunity does not necessarily imply equality of outcome, however. This is a well-known, completely non-controversial fact.
I am 100% in favor of equality of opportunity. Not so much in favor of rigging things to get perfect equality of outcome because that inevitably means inequality of opportunity.
It was very clear he was calling women subhuman and calling for their rape.
I'm not sure if you're serious or are just trolling, but if you are serious, please quote the portion of the essay that says the above.
The important part is that the person was at-will. Don't stir the pot, won't draw the ire of the people who can fire you. Now he's unhirable, though I guess he could go work for Reason or something
Your wife should get her money back.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
If he doesn't, rest assured he can have a new career on the lecture circuit. He can call it Pick the real memo
As for me, I think I want to look into starting a consulting company of engineers fired for non-engineering-related reasons.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
How is "reverse" discrimination not discrimination?
You can make a simulation: generate a number of individuals with assigned skill scores, by a given distribution. Generate also a population B, with a same or similar distribution but a lower mean (or alternatively, same mean and lower variance, etc). Use any bell-curve distribution (such as normal) with no cap (so D&D-like 3d6 is out).
Now, pick N top scorers from the combined population. Compare the same with various kinds of racism:
You'll see that any kind of racism hurts the person doing the discrimination as he gets an unoptimal result. You can also notice that affirmative action is drastically more harmful than traditional racism. Both are bad, though, and there's a big gain for being race- (and gender-, etc) blind.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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.
Neither Google nor Alphabet are listed as having contracts with the State of California.
https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/onlin...
You are welcome on my lawn.
He might well be right. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't have seen this coming.
He was certainly right - at least to whatever extent the science was right. The core of his memo was a survey of the current scientific literature, with citations. Of course, this stuff isn't physics, but it is repeatable measurements with known (if limited) predictive ability.
He's pretty young though, and a PhD, so I suspect he was quite naive. "Should have" seen it coming, sure, I agree, but understandable that he didn't. An engineer addressing an unknown by studying the science behind the problem, and using that as a basis to ask some obvious questions. Sort of what you want an engineer to do.
Also important to remember that he was a computer scientist addressing the "science" behind an issue outside his area of expertise.
At-will in a state where firing him for political viewpoints is illegal, and in a country where his essay counts as whistleblowing (he's alleging Google engages in illegal practices) and where retaliatory action against whistleblowers is illegal. Google can't fire this guy after the incident / dispute, nor can they reassign him to nothingness, hold him back in his career, etc.
Google fucked up.
Also important to remember that he was a computer scientist addressing the "science" behind an issue outside his area of expertise.
Fair enough. Here's Dr Jordan Peterson's interview with the guy https://youtu.be/SEDuVF7kiPU . tl;dw: he got the science right.
Here's four other actual scientists commenting on the memo: http://quillette.com/2017/08/0... tl;dr: he got the science right, x4
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
To win he will have to prove more than one of a few things.
- There is discrimination (presumably against men) resulting from Google's policies, or affirmative action which is illegal in California, and thus he is a whistleblower.
Wrong. He only has to show that he made the claims in good faith.
An unsubstantiated claim grants immunity from retaliation for making the claim. The only exception is when you can show that the person made the claim in bad faith (being a liar vs. being incorrect).
I'm not even going to read the rest of your post because you're misinformed and incorrect from the start.
Woops I linked to the short version of the interview
Here is the full interview
"His name was James Damore."
He does not have a PhD.
There was something on a linkdin profile or something that either claimed a PhD, or just studying for a PhD, which has since been removed. The profile change was made when someone called the school and found he had not completed a PhD, then published that.
Perhaps you didn't notice, but the site you linked lists companies and individuals holding a state contractor's license. These are entities that are licensed by the state to provide services to the public, and shouldn't be confused with companies that have contracts with the state.
Here's something a little more relevant to the discussion, as it shows that Google does indeed have a contract with the state of California -- a description of Google's contract with the University of Californa.
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.
When it comes to sex, you are somewhat incorrect. I work more in the hardware side, but the female engineers that I have known have been every bit as good as the men (some better than most men).
However, take your example, and have the two groups be the SAME in terms of skill, but group A is much more numerous than group B. In order to hire the same numbers of A and B, you need to lower the standards for B.
That is possibly what we have here. If you want equal numbers of males and females, but the males in the workforce outnumber the females 4 to 1, you will have to let the standards slide to get the numbers of women up.
A quick Google search turned this up, which shows that women tend to be around 20% of the graduates in I.T. fields.
http://www.economicmodeling.co...
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Not all experts agree on this matter.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/cat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
While both of those books accept that there is some biological element, they state that it is overblown and largely based on poor science. Results that are not reproducible, use too small sample sizes, inadequate controls and extravagant conclusions.
Were you hoping people wouldn't follow your links? Because one book has already been thoroughly discredited (see below) and the other doesn't actually support "all brains are alike".
The second one (wikipedia) is debunked in the very page you linked to by a few respectable journals, notably Biology of Sex Differences and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
In the page you link to a fairly prolific and respected scientist says this about the first book:
"strongest in exposing research conclusions that are closer to fiction than science...and weakest in failing to also point out differences that are supported by a body of carefully conducted and well-replicated research."
There is a body of carefully conducted and well-replicated research for the assertions of the fired googler. The conclusions that are closer to fiction than to science are not any that he made.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Wabbit season!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Google has already getting harassed by dept. of labor. It's not as far-fetched as it sounds.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It is counterintuitive, but there's no or only a slight difference (depends on the distribution) between a group being less numerous, or having less skill.
We don't care about the mean, or the bulk of the population -- only about the tail end. And tail ends of distribution D(x) tend to be similar between D(x-a) vs D(x)/b -- for some distributions like exponential exactly equal, for some close enough to be hard to distinguish on real noisy data.
And we don't care about the number of graduates either, as that is affected by artificial programs. A more telling metric is eg. the number of women among top 1000 kernel contributors, a sample of Debian package maintainers, etc. I've did the legwork and counted kernel contributors with gender-obvious names (I'm familiar with western and slavic first names), among the top 1000 commiters whose first name reveals gender, there's _8_ women. Yes, only 8 out of 1000!
But those 8 are no worse than their peers. Not only rarity is indistinguishable from low avg skill, low avg skill in indistinguishable from rarity! Thus, if you apply equal fair standards, you'll get a smaller proportion of top achievers than the general population would imply, but individuals from group B who do qualify above the threshold, are no worse than individuals from group A.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You're conflating assistance for low-scorers with picking the cream of the crop. A wheelchair-bound person is not going to win a running competition. Heck, he won't even win an endurance car race -- the first moment any routine maintenance needs to be done, he'll be stuck with a trivial malfunction that an able-bodied driver would fix in minutes.
As for a girls-only CS class, yes, it is discrimination. Gender doesn't make an individual worse, it may at most affect the average of a population. That is, even though men on the average have much higher upper body strength, I wouldn't want to pick a fight with a female lumberjack.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
His "assertions were abusive towards women" because the PC police and a lot of illiterate journalists looking for clickbait decided they were, NOT because of what he wrote.
What he wrote was about the fact that there are several ways to create jobs or revamp existing ones that would make them more appealing to a wider group of women which would in turn make Google more productive and an overall better place to work. While acknowledging that there is a wide overlap of traits and skills shared by both men and women there are still certain traits generally favored by women and others by men (either due to genetics or social constructs).
In other words, if 70% of men and only 35% of women share a trait then it is counterintuitive and anti-productive to try and force a 50/50 split in men/women working in a job or style that favors that trait. Instead it would be better to find traits which have a more even split or even favor women and create more of those jobs. One of his example is that they could expand their pair programming efforts as women tend to have better social aptitude and work well in groups.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Except he didn't state or even imply that anyone is "biologically unfit". All he said was that biology contributes a portion of the non-50/50 distribution of men and women in tech and high-level leadership roles. He even explicitly stated that everyone should be evaluated as individuals irrespective of their race or gender. And then went on to suggest some non-discriminatory ways to help improve diversity and reduce any unconscious/systemic bias against minorities.
Knowledge Brings Fear
There is a scene in Zardoz in which the group of "Eternals" gangs up on one of its members and harshly punishes him for his crimethought.
The witchhunt of the Google engineer reminds me of this scene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So the first line has two references in it, and you say "backed by nothing". The last line again contains a reference. Discuss the references, don't pretend he's basing it on nothing.
The extraversion part has no references, true. But this is not a research paper - it is an internal memo that is more full of citations than I've ever seen in a memo. If you worked at Google, it would be totally reasonable to ask where the hell he got that part from (though to be honest I found it right away Googling for it).
And if the Google climate can't handle the debunking of a young man's memo, then it is all he is accusing it of being. He didn't drink the Kool-Aid.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.