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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.
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."
Stop lying. He didn't call their female workforce inferior.
IAAL, though not an employment lawyer and not a California lawyer. I think he has a case- it will survive a motion to dismiss and possibly even summary judgment- but not necessarily one he will win if it goes to final merits. Google is likely to fight hard on this one, but they also understood a lawsuit was the likely outcome of firing him, and likely decided it was worth the cost.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apart from being a misrepresentation of the science, it ignores the fact that the situation improves when they have an equal opportunity.
Everything he claimed about the (statistical) differences between men and women regarding the "big 5" personality traits represents the current state of the science.
Fun fact: in the Scandy countries, where a huge effort was made to level the playing field for men and women, these differences are more pronounced. Science.
I can hear a "citation needed" in the wind, so I'll steal this from Jordan Peterson's interview with the Google guy (all should be links to full papers):
Sex differences in personality:
http://bit.ly/2gJVmEp
http://bit.ly/2vEKTUx
Larger/large and stable sex differences in more gender-neutral countries: (Note: these findings runs precisely and exactly contrary to social constructionist theory: thus, it's been tested, and it's wrong).
http://bit.ly/2uoY9c4
(Women's) interest in things vs (men's) interest in things:
http://bit.ly/2wtlbzU
http://bit.ly/2fsq7Ru
The importance of exposure to sex-linked steroids on fetal and then lifetime development:
http://bit.ly/2vP0ZLS
Exposure to prenatal testosterone and interest in things (even when the exposure is among females):
http://bit.ly/2wI28RE
Primarily biological basis of personality sex differences:
http://bit.ly/2vmtSMs
http://bit.ly/2uoPzy0
Status and sex: males and females
http://bit.ly/2uoWkMh
http://bit.ly/2uoIOw8
http://bit.ly/2vNzcL6
To quote de Bruyn et al (first reference on status and sex, above): high status predicts more mating opportunities and, thus, increased reproductive success. âoeThis is true for human adults in many cultures, both âmodernâ(TM) as well as âprimitiveâ(TM) (Betzig, 1986). In fact, this theory seems to be confirmed for non-human primates (Cheney, 1983; Cowlishaw and Dunbar, 1991; Dewsbury, 1982; Gray, 1985; Maslow, 1936) and other animals from widely differing ecologies (Ellis, 1995) such as squirrels (Farentinos, 1972), cockerels (Kratzer and Craig, 1980), and cockroaches (Breed, Smith, and Gall, 1980).â Status also increases female reproductive success, via a different pathway: âoeFor females, it is generally argued that dominance is not necessarily a path to more copulations, as it is for males. It appears that important benefits bestowed upon dominant women are access to resources and less harassment from rivals (Campbell, 2002). Thus, dominant females tend to have higher offspring survival rates, at least among simians (Pusey, Williams, and Goodall, 1997); thus, dominance among females also appears to be linked to reproductive success.â
Personality and political belief
http://bit.ly/2hJ1Kjb
http://bit.ly/2fsxIzB
http://bit.ly/2fsILJd
http://bit.ly/2uoPS87
http://bit.ly/2ftDhOq
Conscientiousness associated with conservatism; neuroticism and agreeableness with liberalism: http://bit.ly/2wHNA4r
Problems with the measurement and concept of unconscious bias:
http://bit.ly/2vGzhQP
http://bit.ly/2vQuwEP (this one is particularly damning)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
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.
But at Google the gender gap in tech roles is 80-20, according to their own self-reporting. There's something more systemic going on than the subtle psychological differences between men and women.
Perhaps. This woman argues that the differences are self-exaggerating, that fields which fewer women are interested in pursuing tend to be male-dominated, which makes them even less attractive to women, which makes them more male-dominated, in a cycle which leads ultimately to a situation where only the women most devoted to the field stay in it.
Read the article, it's well-written and insightful.
This accords as well with the experience of Scandinavian countries who have bent over backwards to ensure not just absolute equality of opportunity, but that everyone has the opportunity to pursue whatever course of education they like and have the talent for. And what they've seen is that rather than fields which are historically dominated by one gender or another equalizing, the ratio has become even more extreme. In Norway, for example, engineering fields tend not to be 50/50, or even 80/20, but 90/10. It appears that when you free people to pursue their own interests, the gender gap increases.
An interesting exploration of this issue in Norway is presented in https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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