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Newspaper Obtains James Damore's Complaint Against Google (siliconbeat.com)
A Silicon Valley newspaper brings this update on fired Google engineer James Damore:
California law allows employers to fire workers for virtually any reason -- and the Constitutional protection of free speech doesn't apply to private company workplaces. Until now it was unclear how Damore might fight back against Google over his termination. Now, this news organization has obtained the U.S. National Labor Relations Board charge sheet that reveals the basis for Damore's battle. His argument hinges on the contents of his memo, which went far beyond discussing a possible biological reason for the gender gap.
The document contained detailed criticism of Google's diversity initiatives and their effects on employees, and it said that the company's biases led to alienation among employees holding conservative views. His Labor Board charge rests on Section 8(a) subsection (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to engage in activities for the purpose of "mutual aid or protection." Google discriminated against Damore by firing him "in retaliation" for activities protected by law, and also possibly to discourage such activities within the company, the charge sheet said. It appears clear that the protected activities Damore refers to are his communications, in the memo, with co-workers, about issues in the workplace.
Google was unavailable for comment, but the newspaper quoted an earlier statement from Google CEO Sundar Pichai that "An important part of our culture is lively debate. But like any workplace that doesn't mean that anything goes."
The document contained detailed criticism of Google's diversity initiatives and their effects on employees, and it said that the company's biases led to alienation among employees holding conservative views. His Labor Board charge rests on Section 8(a) subsection (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to engage in activities for the purpose of "mutual aid or protection." Google discriminated against Damore by firing him "in retaliation" for activities protected by law, and also possibly to discourage such activities within the company, the charge sheet said. It appears clear that the protected activities Damore refers to are his communications, in the memo, with co-workers, about issues in the workplace.
Google was unavailable for comment, but the newspaper quoted an earlier statement from Google CEO Sundar Pichai that "An important part of our culture is lively debate. But like any workplace that doesn't mean that anything goes."
Maybe you should read what Damore wrote. Copies are easily available from multiple sources, though look for the unedited copies, not the ones selectively edited to push an agenda. In short, he said there are differences to how men and women approach topics and Google's workplace tended to be more accommodating to men than women, and some changes could help the situation. This was interpreted the way your question implies (which I hope was an honest question rather than a passive-aggressive snark), and he was terminated for what was phrased as an attack on women.
no martian, read the memo
"An important part of our culture is lively debate. But like any workplace that doesn't mean that anything goes."
weasel words
noun
words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading.
You obviously did not read the memo.
Maybe it's because you're ACTUALLY trolling, under the guise of "I just don't agree with you".
Because that's all leftists do, is claim to be the voice of reason when in actuality, they're just trolling anyone who can read and think logically. Since you are obviously incapable of using logic and critical thought when reading the memo, you simply state that it's "underwhelming" not because you disagree, but because you just "don't get it".
You may not even realize you're trolling, but you're still trolling nonetheless and deserve to be modded as such.
What are you doing? Stop it. This is not the time to be logical, there's men to hate.
It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be written by an engineer - who thinks that because he's so, so smart, he can easily grasp argumentation, social sciences, and politics. But the reality is, this is the guy who - when he walks into a meeting - the room rolls its eyes because the meeting is going to take twice as long and accomplish half as much. But boy, are you going to hear his opinions.
The irony is staggering!
There is nothing in the constitution that says you have a right to a particular job.
You might want to let Colin Kaepernick know that. He seems to think otherwise.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Google fires James Damore for writing a conservative memo.
Liberals: It's a private company, they're not obligated to respect his free speech rights.
The NFL fires Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the anthem
Liberals: THEY VIOLATED HIS RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Instead of being as clueless as all the other group-think-morons, you could actually read what he wrote and edited, which was based on feedback of coworkers. But then that would require effort, something virtual-signalling does not. And if you did read it, or got past the TLDR... Nice! Is it that your reading comprehension sucks? Or is it that you're so biased, it has clouded your comprehension?
No, this is the case where a liberal presents a view that maybe women don't want STEM careers. And those critical of him and who fired him didn't bother to actually read what he wrote, and just assumed the author was a conservative who said that women are inferior at STEM.
Really, this case has become a great litmus test at determining who actually reads the facts and decides for themselves, vs. who doesn't care about the facts as long as they can use the issue to publicly demonstrate that they're being compliant with the socially acceptable conclusion.
Try reading the memo.
You are trolling. Everyone who read the memo knows that you did not.
It's painfully obvious, in fact, and it's hilarious because it makes you look so ignorant and you're not even aware of it.
I read through that article, but I don't think it's a fair characterization of Damore's paper. From my reading of his paper (or whatever, I don't want to go read it again):
Damore was saying: A) There are many possible reasons for the gender gap among programmers: here are some suggestions; and B) Google's current recruiting methods are not effective.
The Economist article you linked to took those "here are some suggestions" and turned them into absolute assertions. You can tell the Economist article is confused because of phrases like, "at least that’s what you seem to be doing; you don’t quite say so." He doesn't say so because that's not what he's doing: the Economist author got confused because he assumed Damore was actually trying to make a solid assertion.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Don't say that you want a dialogue about something, then fire somebody if one actually happens.
> He says things - over, and over, and over - like they're facts, with zero basis for them. His citations are often ridiculous, and he certainly does spend some time talking about how unbiased HE is.
Way to contradict yourself. He has zero basis... except for all the citations of scientific studies. What could be more ridiculous than hand-waving away all the evidence without bothering to engage with it? Why don't you read the memo some more and discuss that? Right, then you'd have to deal with scientific facts that make you uncomfortable.
So please explain the factual basis of your disagreement with the citations or GTFO. There are facts on this side in the paper. You haven't presented even one specific factual basis for disagreement. That only serves to show people that you know your basis for arguing is weak and you therefore are reluctant to disclose any specific factual disagreements.
In short, facts or GTFO.
An important part of working culture is: do the job, and don't cause problems.
I think the big problem here is the lack of understanding in some people that when you're at work, they're paying for your time. Using that time to promote your own dogma or bullshit is probably going to be frowned on, and rightfully so. Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to think they can spout their bullshit anywhere and anytime without having and responsibility or repercussions for doing that.
Advice from someone old, to all the youth: When you go to work... do the job, and shut the hell up with your whining shit.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
In case you've forgotten, here's an unretouched photo of Mr Damore with two former co-workers who had just had their way with him. If you look closely, you can see that one is still holding the fork that Damore used to toss his salad. According to several other co-workers, it was entirely consensual.
I want you to take a step back and think about how you're trying to shame him based on his physical appearance and mock him by implying his sexuality, and then think about how you'd feel about anybody who did that to a woman for any reason.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
The memo is here. There are these crazy things called "quotes" that one normally uses to support a particular point like that. You have posted six times on this story as of a moment ago when I went here and counted. I note a conspicuous lack of supporting quotes in your posting.
I do not and will not believe that you have read the actual, uncensored memo until and unless you quote from the memo to support your claims. You appear to have read reports about the memo while ignoring the memo itself and then conflated what's been reported about the memo with that which was actually written. This is hilariously bad because some outlets have done stupid things like strip all the citations.
Because what reader would want to bother with pesky things like facts in a discussion like this?
Perhaps the issue is your baseless assertion that you've determined his conclusions are invalid because his citations are [all the negative characterizations], when neither you nor any of his other critics have actually presented evidence to support that argument. That's what makes it a troll argument. I've already commented so couldn't mod either way, but had you backed up your criticisms of his citations with research invalidating those papers, which weren't riddled with flaws, biases, etc, themselves, I would have been very interested in reading it and would have upmodded. But repeating the same old "Well I think the science he cited is wrong" is just a troll at this point without counter-cites.
So, I notice your argument consists of "he is wrong" without giving concrete arguments and evidence.
I.e. you need to say with a little detail what the "old, tired talking points" are; what the "obvious truths, wild extrapolationsn claims purporting to be obvious truths but which were more like references to tired stereotypes" are; and how the "cherry picked, old, contentious or in some cases didn't support what they were claimed to support" are in fact cherry picked, or how their age is relevant, or how they are contentious.
Without justifying your accusations with some evidence then your words are pretty hollow.
Well yeah, you can't exactly say a bunch of scientific papers are wrong by supplying flawed ones yourself.
The second link is an opinion piece with no scientific debate simply asserting how wrong all mischaracterizations were like everyone else, the first was more interesting, but of the portion that wasn't just explaining how horrible the author thought his opinions were without challenging the facts, and consisted of actual scientific references, the author has a few valid points here and there, but the bias is so incredibly thick and it's full of so much "no you're wrong and you're a racist sexist because I say so" it doesn't even seem worth pursuing the nitpicks; and there's lots of attacking straw men (by erroneously claiming Damore is asserting biology *alone* accounts for something, then linking to evidence for nature and nurture). I mean seriously, the author explicitly states we shouldn't judge people on their individual merits.. how can you really take that as a serious rebuttal? It's clear someone on the far left was extremely personally offended and tried to take it apart, but the extreme bias and desperation produced nothing but opinion, straw men, and minor nitpicks, among the small percentage of the article that actually directly addressed the actual content.
But that's not a comment I would mod down, since you did at least try to back up the opinion with a non-troll source. Might not mod it up since it's wrong and contradicted by lots of other scientists, but not down.
I mean seriously, the author explicitly states we shouldn't judge people on their individual merits.. how can you really take that as a serious rebuttal?
This is actually the premise behind social justice. Really, it is. I've been told by at least 6 people here on slashdot that if you have any success at all in life when there are other people who don't, then that is an injustice no different than if you had stolen from somebody else. So in other words, social justice says to throw out the Martin Luther King message that people should be judged by the content of their character, and unfortunately, postmodern liberalism has done precisely this.
It is not the best thing since the bible, it is not novel, it is not an entertaining read. However since it is the argument of the discussion, one shoul read it before posting his/her insights.
I read his "essay" in full. It's not completely bad, it has few good points, it has several bad ones, but ultimately this is about the image of the company.
All in all, no matter how much he tried to make it technical, cold or like a scientific study, it's still basically - men are biologically more apt to some types of jobs rather than women, the "extreme left" is hindering Google as a business, and attempts to bring more women into the company is getting to some extremes he doesn't like and feels threatened by.
Are there possibly some extreme left inside Google that is blindly against his views? Probably yes. Could they have had a hand in leaking the essay which ultimately led to him being fired? Also probably yes.
But ultimately, the problem is that Google could not keep him as an employee without it becoming a huge liability. He's smart enough to realize that. His defense will fail because Google will put it up that his attempt of "mutual aid or protection" was obviously damaging to the company as a whole, to several employees, and to general company policies. He has no ground to stand.
The press took his essay to say it's an attempt to biologically label women as inferior. It's not exactly that, nor it is what the full thing is about, but that's the image that was left.
With this, it's pretty much unsustainable to keep him there both for Google's image as a company, and as an employee that would most likely create an internal divide that the company really cannot afford.
Now, Google is a company that has been struggling, spending a whole ton of money, and reforming itself internally to adopt a more progressive role and go exactly against speeches like his. This is probably the current money sinkhole there, as it is on several other social networks.
His steps towards a better company, at least some of them, are not bad per se, but the way he put it isn't great for anyone.
It's all about the tone. There's a bunch of useful stuff in his write up, but unfortunately, it came with a bunch of other stuff that threw mud in entire areas where Google is investing a whole lot of money and effort. It calls for elimination of parts of Google. It certainly wasn't only mutual aid and protection, it was also an attack on parts of Google's internal structure. And to make things worse, he politicized his views - the sort of polarization that Google and other big companies are definitely trying to run away from. There's a lot of unjustified and baseless labeling in his speech where he keeps trying to defend stereotypification and labeling with general statistics. It's poor science at best, prejudice at worst.
If Google kept him there, even if the argument was in defense of free speech or whatever, it would bring the polarization and toxicity of political discussions inside the company more than it probably already is.
This is a personal opinion of course, but I think Google did the right thing. Even if he somehow wins his complaint, in the long run it'll be far less damaging to the company as a whole.
For all I know the document may have some valid points buried in the misogynist bullshit
You appear to have redefined the term 'misogynist'. Could you perhaps highlight the "misogynist bullshit" in Damore's document because I didn't spot it.
Whether he had valid points or not, the way people have demonised his writing means he was indeed clearly working within a hostile workplace culture. It's just that it was clearly hostile to men, not to women.
Why hasn't the person that leaked it been disciplined? They're the person that damaged Google's reputation. Damore merely wrote a document for internal use.
I've never written "These views are mine and mine alone" on a document created for internal use. I've never written it on one written for external use either, as those do represent my employer.
Men NEVER face a similar problem, so their stress level is invariably MUCH LESS from the job.
Check suicide rates by gender, then fuck off with your pop psychology bullshit.
The basic problem is that he asserts that women make, on average, biologically inferior engineers.
He didn't. He said that they choose not to be engineers (which is true, and you agree with it), possibly for biological reasons. Once women choose to become engineers, they are just as good as men.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."