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James Damore Sues Google For Allegedly Discriminating Against Conservative White Men (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The author of the controversial memo that upended Google in August is suing the company, alleging that white, male conservatives are systematically discriminated against by Google. James Damore was fired as an engineer after a manifesto questioning the benefits of diversity programs was widely passed around the company. In a new lawsuit, he and another fired engineer claim that "employees who expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Google's employment policies and its business, such as 'diversity' hiring policies, 'bias sensitivity,' or 'social justice,' were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights."
About damn time. Let's see if the courts are as willing as social media platforms to allow racism and discrimination as long as it's against the "right" people.
but widely disemminating such a document massively increased the chance of a leak
Except he did not "widely diseminate such a document". He had a "training seminar" and was asked for feedback, which he provided on an internal board reserved for such discussions internally.
AKA : he did nothing wrong at all. Google got bad press because they force everyone into "diversity training" and then don't like it when people don't think "skin color" or "gender" is a good attribute to base hirings on and lets them know the "seminar" was simply bad.
Did you even read the memo ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
There may very well be laws against firing whistleblowers who were blowing the whistle on illegal discrimination.
Illegal discrimination would be anything that violates the equal protection clause
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And if Google were illegally discriminating and Damore pointed this out, which he did, it would be illegal to fire him
https://www.workplacefairness....
In addition, the California State Legislature has adopted statutory protections for employees. Notably, California has a general whistleblower protection statute that protects employees who disclose illegal activity or refuse to participate in illegal activities. Whistleblowers are thus protected under both this statute and the common law public policy exception. Also, several other California statutes contain anti-retaliation provisions. Employees who engage in protected activities (usually filing a complaint or testifying) under laws in the following subject areas are protected from retaliation: discrimination, hazardous substances, occupational safety and health, and workers' compensation. Also, California protects employees who file a complaint relating to employee rights with Labor Commissioner.
Damore's memo was more subtle than his detractors give him credit for
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
He explains that 'Google has created several discriminatory practice' and suggests 'non discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap'. So he could argue Google were breaking the law, he blew the whistle and they fired him.
Google have pots of money of course, so they'll probably pay him off. And go on discriminating.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
...as an engineer after a manifesto questioning the benefits of diversity programs....
His manifesto did not question the benefits of the diversity program. It questioned its fficacy -- in other words, he questioned if Google could achieve more diversity by structuring the program differently.
And that's a very big difference. I really hate the level of journalism being thrown at this topic, here and everywhere else.
Conservative is not. As one of those snowflakes I would like it to be, but those sort of worker protections have been shot down by (ironically) white, conservative men...
The suit was filed in California, where political affiliation does qualify for some of the employment-related protections afforded to protected classes.
To wit:
California law prohibits employers from making rules or policies that forbid or prevent employees from participating in politics or running for public office, or that control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees. State law also prohibits employers from coercing or attempting to influence employees' political decisions by threats of discharge or loss of employment (CA Lab. Code Sec. 1101, Sec. 1102).
It was not a "manifesto", let alone an anti-diversity one. That's what it was called in the media. Big difference.
This is Slashdot, it's what we do.
Table-ized A.I.
Donald Trump's unhinged tantrums on Twitter are game theory. Tit for tat.
He is merely feeding back to the American public exactly what they are putting out.
Like your post. It is unhinged, ridiculous on its face (and increasingly so after any level of consideration), and a testament to the absolute insanity that partisanship foments. To me it looks identical to the Twitter account of Donald Trump in tone and intellect.
In many ways this fits the description I have heard about "the government you deserve." When the electorate learns maturity, restraint, and civility we will get mature, restrained, and civil governance.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Well no, he didn't. What he said is that there are differences on average between men and women and those differences can explain why a job is not exactly 50:50 male and female even in the absence of discrimination. He also pointed out that those differences are an average for a group and pointed out there's a lot of overlap. So saying 'women on average are more X than men' doesn't mean that 'each individual woman is more X than any man'. When the fake news media reported on his report they accused him of saying that 'men can code/women can't code', but he very carefully explained this was not what he was saying. And he even drew a nice diagram of two overlapping normal distributions to illustrate this point.
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
Note, I'm not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are "just." I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there's significant overlap between men and women, so you can't say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
He pointed out that Google's policies now discriminate against men and that there were non discriminatory ways to get more women to work there.
But why not try reading what he actually wrote rather than what other people - who have an agenda - said he wrote. I even linked to a copy of his memo so you can verify he said all the things I said he said, and carefully explained he was not saying what you accused him of saying.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
There is no such thing as "reverse racism", racism is racism, and judging people by the color of their skin is always wrong, even if your purpose is to help the person.
There are no such thing as good racism, as you're always reducing the person to his physical features.
they will roll out the HR termination paperwork documenting how he was abusing other employees because they weren't white
Ha. All he did was state his opinion that Google's policies and culture were discriminatory. For that, HE was abused by the social "justice" idiots that rule the roost at Google, like this asshole:
From: Alex Hidalgo <ahidalgo@google.com>
Subject: You are a terrible person
Date: Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 10:38 PM
To: James Damore <damore@google.com>
Feel free to pass this along to HR. Keep them in the loop for all I care. May as well do it early.
You're a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you.
-Alex
https://www.scribd.com/documen...
Then there's the Democratic Socialists. The Bernie Bros. I don't see these guys getting anywhere. Nobody wants to pay for something else's medical care. Nobody want to pay for their schools. Sure, you can argue that such things benefit everyone (e.g. we could pay our national debt off in 10 years with the money single payer healthcare would save, look it up). But it still doesn't _feel_ right. Especially with a good chunk of the country bigoted against _somebody_. We're balkanized. We're not Americans. We're White Americans. Black Americans. Gay Americans. Christian Americans. But we're not Americans.
You are correct about Americans being fragmented. We had a lot more overt racism and demonization of different groups back in the 1950s but at least the American Dream, national pride, and national unity was a coherent idea shared by most people (even if it was not completely true).
On the topic of socialist policies, I DO want to pay for education of others. The children of today will be taking care of me when I'm old, and it is in my direct interest that they are not complete idiots. On the other hand, every time the government gets involved in paying private enterprises for things, costs skyrocket as people game the system. Expanding college education by subsidies or direct payments is a prime example. Health insurance is another.
The most cost-effective government services are those run without significant subcontracting, such as the Postal service, National Parks, etc. Government should provide services either directly without significant subcontracting, or not at all. The problem with this is that private companies are well entrenched, lobby for subsidies, and oppose government-run services that compete with them. Local government-run internet services are a prime example.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.