Slashdot Mirror
Ex-Google Employee's Memo Says Executives Shut Down Pro-Diversity Discussions (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A memo written by a former Google engineer claims that the company's human resources department and a senior vice president pressured him to stop discussing diversity initiatives on company forums, interactions that ultimately motivated him to leave the company. The document, which was written in 2016 and shared publicly this week, provides a striking counterpoint to allegations made by former Google employees James Damore and David Gudeman in a discrimination lawsuit filed against their former employer. Cory Altheide, the former employee who wrote the memo, began work as a security engineer at Google in 2010 and departed the company in January 2016. He recently published his account in a public Google document. Altheide posted several articles and comments to internal discussion groups that promoted diversity in the workplace and was chastised for doing so, he wrote.
>muh norities
w
...we have another employee suing because he felt discriminated-against because of policies designed to increase diversity.
You can't satisfy all of the people all of the time.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
>provides a striking counterpoint
I don't think so, it looks more like managers have their idea of how they want "diversity" to operate (for diversity read tokenism, PR nonsense, and a complete obedience to management ideas at all times).
*ironic captcha == 'complied' :P
Well, diversity sucks...
Those diverse chicks can suck my dick
Altheide posted several articles and comments to internal discussion groups that promoted diversity in the workplace and was chastised for doing so, he wrote.
Given that was exactly the same as what Damore did, I don't see how it's a counterpoint. Or is it that Gizmodo only approves of Altheide's diversity and Damore's diversity is "wrong"?
Fortunately, there's a lawsuit by Damore and Gudeman against Google happening, so it's quite likely the matter will be explored fully and we can all enjoy finding out what's been going on.
Can you think of a bigger waste of time? I'd shut that shit down too. Do that garbage on your own time, at church, or your famous PTA meetings. Life's too short for this crap. Christ! You can't even flirt anymore. Fucking dementors taking all the joy out of life!
And please note, I am a zenophile. Fucking your own kind/race/nationality is almost gay.
There is a difference between dropping diversity as a business necessity and denying minorities' right to exist.
#DeleteFacebook
maybe he is just saying that this discussion sucks, have similar experience and read slashdot 15+ years. good comments get downvoted by either stupidity or paid trolls - mostly interesting things are difficult to understand and there is zero tolerance for that here, seems like AI thinking in easily recognizable templates only.
Times change and Google could very well be batting from the other side now
After a while, people realize that offering your opinion when asked for it is one of those "constructive dismissal" traps.
Now get fucked.
We're trying! Stop resisting!
freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
Oh shut the fuck up!
This isn't exactly a "counter-point". From an article about Damore's case:
“We want to be inclusive of people not ideas” one employee identified as Alon Altman wrote in a message included in the lawsuit. Damore says that sentiment was backed up at an Inclusion and Diversity Summit he attended in June, when he was told by Google employees the company does not value “viewpoint diversity,” but actively strives for “demographic diversity.”
This new memo seems to reinforce this perspective. It might not be illegal or anything, but this memo definately doesn't "counter" the claims included in damore's suit.
This whole diversity/gender debate thing is getting and more into an absurd territory of epic proportions. It's quite some time ago that I've been able to take larger parts of mainstream contributions to this debate seriously.
To me a very welcome addition of reason and level-headedness was the open letter of ~100 women of influence and fame in France speaking out against #MeToo, it's totalitarianism and a false pretense of feminism published two days ago in Le Monde (basically the French nyt) that went largely unnoticed/uncovered by mainstream media. These ladies deserve a medal or something and they deserve to be heard, despite mainstream media trying to ignore them.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The more you read and hear about these problems, the more you realize, employers simply should not care about these things. Whether an engineer, a train-dispatcher, or a secretary is a racist or a feminist is irrelevant — what matters is whether or not they do a good job.
And employers do not want to care either — it is an expensive minefield, gravely dangerous no matter what you do.
However, the Illiberals laws and practices force them into policing employee conduct. Our Illiberal overlords, themselves restrained from regulating speech, manage to compel employers into such policing with the overhanging threats of prosecutions for "hostile work environment.
That is, yeah, much as we hate it, it is legal for you to say what you want to say. We can neither fine nor imprison you for saying it, sadly. But we can force your employer to fire you instead, and that's almost as good.
Thus, arguing whether or not Google "has a right" to decide what to do, is completely bogus. Whatever the personal opinions of the company's executives, their hand is forced. Forced by the busybodies, who've shredded the First Amendment.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A whole lot of nothing. Even Altheide agreed with google to an extent. Some choice quotes:
"The engineer noted in his memo that some involved in the discussions questioned diversity in ways that were clearly “not coming from a position of good faith” and shouldn’t be tolerated."
"I wanted to point out that blanket assumptions of good faith in diversity topics aren’t data driven, given that the data shows not everyone is acting from a position of good faith."
"stupid as the myth of meritocracy the tech industry is so in love with"
To recap. He had is own platform in google. He starts discussion about diversity and others comment that break company policy. He agrees those comments should not be tolerated. He wanted to point out assumption of diversity are not data driven and that meritocracy is a myth.
Did I miss anything?
As title
And suggesting that "Slashdot has a rusty iron up it's ass" passes for intellectual discussion?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
We know exactly what Damore's memo said. There are no quotes from Altheide's posts in the article, except thread titles (“If you think women in tech is just a pipeline problem, you haven’t been paying attention" and "Just Asking Questions").
Why do I have the suspicion that these posts weren't as well reasoned (and backed up by cited scientific research) as Damore's memo?
Google management doesn't want to talk about, and that's why HR cut off discussion on this particular topic even though the initial post favored management's POV.
If I was running that forum I might've done the same thing.
Damores article essentially attempts to justify centuries old gender bias with "science." Most people in the scientific community, including myself, were reaching for the popcorn and fascinated to see just how deep he would go trying to prove a pretty tenuous point.
https://www.wired.com/story/th...
Damore makes a pretty sophomoric error several times, conflating gender and sex, but if that controversy isnt enough he starts flogging nature vs nurture. I myself being an evolutionary biologist nearly joked from laughter on my jiffy pop.
Im sure google would win this in court, however its cheaper and easier to settle out of court with the usual no-fault, no-deny and a litany of contractual boilerplate that keeps anyone from speaking of this ever again. Expect this guy to tour Fox news a few times and write a book in a few years, but the idea that he will ever face summary execution in front of a jury of actual scientists is unfortunately not going to happen.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The problem with these pro-diversity talks, is that we're hiring people because they're diverse, rather then if they're skilled and the right fit. If you see a development team who is all white and male, you have SJW's crying discrimination, when in fact, in 99.999% of cases, you have qualified people, the right people working together. People shouldn't be hired because they're diverse, they should be hired because they're the right fit.
Maybe Altheide was trying to discuss REAL diversity, and not the faux diversity that stops at the color of your skin and the shape of your genitals that's so fashionable at Google?
In other words, a REAL discussion?
You know, kinda like Damore did?
FTFA:
Over the course of several months, employees engaged in a debate about gender representation at Google in an internal thread titled “If you think women in tech is just a pipeline problem, you haven’t been paying attention.” The debate became contentious, Altheide said in his memo, and had to be shut down by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president of ads and commerce, and Urs Holzle, Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure. . . .
Ramaswamy wrote: “Google is not a debate club or a philosophy class. We are a workplace and we have an obligation to make sure our discussions remain respectful. Debates around topics like product excellence can support a wide variety of viewpoints and are great to have. I don’t think the same can be said for debates around sensitive issues such as gender, religion, race, or sexual orientation.”
.. freedom of speech...
In the US Constitution, freedom of speech prevents the government from deciding what speech is acceptable but even that has limits as can quickly be found if a person decides to scream "FIRE" when no such danger exists, among other such notable exceptions.
It bothers me that Americans don't understand what the term freedom of speech implies. No one enjoys unlimited freedom of speech nor would anyone want that right granted to anyone. And nowhere is that more enforced than in a business.
To experience this firsthand, feel free to walk into your boss's office and tell him you think he's an asshole. And when you get fired, follow up on your experiment by suing your boss for depriving you of your right to free speech. To even drive that lesson home further, at your first opportunity, explain to the judge that he has no right to tell you anything.
Please let us know how that works out.
No, they can't their God hates sex
If you RTFA what Google execs did was shut down contentious discussions about diversity. Altheide posted pro-diversity comments which apparently tended to spark big flamewars, and he was told to stop.
The fact is that this is a contentious topic in the tech industry, inside Google just as much as everywhere else (including slashdot, obviously). Google employees have lots of internal communications fora which are unpoliced and heavily used, and the employees are not closely monitored, which creates a risk that when contentious topics arise on these internal fora people get sucked in, wasting a lot of time and generating a lot of bad blood, both of which have significant negative impacts on productivity.
One of the core tenets of Google culture is that one should always assume good faith and competence on the part of their colleagues (unless proven otherwise, obviously), but that's a tenet that works much better in a small company that is highly selective in its hires. In most situations it works reasonably well in a big company that is highly selective in its hires... but as you grow the law of averages catches up with you and assholes and incompetents sneak in. This is particularly true around areas that won't come up in an interview, like attitudes about diversity.
As a Google employee, my takeaway is "This is why we can't have nice things." Open discussion fora with light oversight, and a culture of internal transparency and openness are really awesome, but they appear to be incompatible with being a large multinational corporation. Sigh.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So why run your mouth. It's basically political discussion. You probably make as many people happy as pissed off by doing this. Just shut up and do your job!
Well in this case, at this moment, diversity seem to be new Communist Revolution in USA and Western Europe.
There is always someone who has to complain about how they are treated. It's a job, and if you don't like it move on. What I do find really interesting is the image Google is showing to the world. It appears Google wants their employees to fit their mold and not question. In the case of diversity, if you question for or against it doesn't matter. What matters is what Google HR is pushing. Remember: HR is there for the company, not the employee. I would be worried for Google and this image as the best talent doesn't want anyone telling them how to think. That's the whole point. Allow your employees to think big and out there. This will hurt Google either way. Need to do some triage.
Yeah, worth pointing out that the management types are usually against productive internal discussions because it makes their top-down decision by fiat seem less effective. Seem, since these types of decisions are nearly always destined to fail, but they'd rather people pretend that the idea works for a few years before firing off another random fiat declaration for a new paradigm.
Screaming "racist!" or "sexist!" at every disliked idea is what passes for intellectual discussion, so people can hardly be blamed for following the new rules.
Any large entity generally has multiple, conflicted ideas floating around. The problem experienced by Cory Altheide doesn't dispute the problems experienced by James Damore. Google has 70,000+ employees! That's massive, and it's highly probably Google has opposite, conflicting problems that wind up re-enforcing each other as each "side" only sees the extreme of the other "side".
To sit back and watch as slashdot, which has become a cesspool of libertarian idealists, undiagnosed aspergers cases, and racist reddit dropouts, attempt to discuss this. Slashdot has a rusty iron rod up it's ass when it comes to racism or sexism, so let's see if anyone takes this guy's claims seriously or has a meaningful discussion about diversity in tech. We'll probably see idiots screaming about "SJW's!!!", which is what passes for intellectual discussion on Slashdot these days. So sad.
You're just like, so above it all, amirite? How's the air up there in smug superiority?
Damores article essentially attempts to justify centuries old gender bias with "science."
Except it did nothing of the sort. What he ATTEMPTED to do was say, if females and males are biologically different, what we can do to improve the workplace environment for females? He may have been ham-fisted about it but that was the obvious intent. It was a paper focused on perceived environmental issues that he thought worked against women, and how he thought might be corrected... a great place to start a discussion on where he was right and wrong, not such a great place to start a series of violent threats followed by immediate termination.
Im sure google would win this in court, however its cheaper and easier to settle out of court
*I'm* sure that Damore will win, and it's refreshing to see that deep down even the most obtuse SJW inherently recognizes the obviousness of his case and thew wrongness of Google for immediate termination over it, thus also predicting victory... how many millions do you think he will get to further his efforts on recognition of gender differences, I wonder.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These people talk as though conservatives were oppressed, but if you read a little more (unless someone is misquoting someone), you'll find out that the "conservative" thing that Gudeman was caught doing, had jack shit to do with conservatism or anything related to left/right politics, and indeed was only tangentially related to politics at all. He could have just as easily claimed he was persecuted for being a communist, and that would be every bit just as accurate (i.e. totally unrelated). Check out this absolute nuttery :
So everyone, take a deep breath. When these kind of people say "conservative," they actually mean paranoia to the point of crippling mental illness, and support for president Trump, at the expense of all Americans -- conservatives and everyone else too.
No matter where you on the left/right scale somewhere, these people are completely fucked up. I wasn't being silly enough when I said he could claim he was disliked for his communism. It'd be less of a stretched analogy to say he was disliked for his shoplifting or spitting on any other employee whenever he saw them wearing a red shirt, or taking a dump in the break room while masturbating. Oh, and being a communist or "conservative" or whatever else fake label you want to put on opinions that are essentially non-political.
Gudeman is the screaming crazy cat lady from The Simpsons. And nobody could work with him? Imagine that!
Goddess.*
However wrong in reasoning Damore may have been, why wasn't his thesis simply rejected in a rational discourse by those who know the matter or took the time to research it?
Maybe you can say that his bringing the point in the first place, however measured, betrays his hostility and distrust towards the policies pushed by the management. But that is often the case in argumentation. If you know you are right you respond to such in a measured way. Judging from the reaction, a nerve was hit which inflamed emotions that made people on the other side blind with rage. That it wasn't one or two crazy folks but many shows that something is deeply wrong within Google.
Which I wouldn't care about, it's Google's thing, if Google weren't the most powerful company on earth shaping the public opinion and perception of reality. This is shit we need to know about.
You are a scientist, how do you react to this internal Google post (part of Damore's filing, Exhibit B):
"I Google'd 'Big Five Personality Differences Male Female' (psych terminology) and nearly every top result backed the offensive claims of Neuroticism and Agreeableness (mean not absolute) differences by gender. Is Search wrong? Should we link to academic finds that may support incorrect stereotypes?"
https://i.redd.it/zxlp6gea8490...
Do you want Google to decide for you what Truth is?
Actually it is. Freedom of speech means exactly that: Freedom from consequences. At least freedom from consequences from the government.
It has never meant anything else.
Anything else is like the old joke:
Is there freedom of speech in the USSR?
In principle, yes. But there may not be much freedom after the speech.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You are nuts and lacking knowledge of history. Sweden's latest war was against non-white slave traders in africa (19th century). No, slavery has been around everywhere. However, feel free to copy our political systems that worked (not the current ones, obviously)
No, it means that the candidates will be chosen according to QUALIFICATION, the color of your skin or ethnic background should NOT be in the equation.
You want to be employed in a place where it's only because they needed something else than peach colored people? How in the hell is this gratifying knowing you were not chosen because of your skills?
Same applies the other way
In a system tailored for white supremacists, denying diversity is effectively telling minorities that they should not exist.
Y'all pretend that being "neutral" is not inherently racist, I'm starting to think that's less stupidity and more maliciousness, I bet you KNOW you have white privilege and you're pretending you're all righteous and just only to maintain your white privilege.
White people have enslaved other races for centuries and enjoyed the benefits of doing so. Simply removing slavery doesn't magically undo the centuries of subjugation and abuse, white people today are still benefiting from past slavery and there is also the important issue of justice: white people never truly paid for what they did.
Sorry tech bros, but losing a few job opportunities is a pretty low price compared to the way white people enslaved, raped, massacred and tortured people of color all throughout history. You can complain about being oppressed by minorities when you're in chains, picking their cotton and with your backs full of scars.
Who do you think sold those black people into slavery - news flash - OTHER black people. White privilege indeed.
Not even half as entertaining as the global warming threads are. There's even sometimes a meaningful posting on these threads here.
Sad.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
On topics like this, it is because they are afraid of lawsuits.
Fleur-de-lit - 1/11/18 10:38pm
Sounds like they just wanted to douse flamewars that were using up company resources. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
It's no different than someone creating any other type of provocative political threads on a corporate message board creating a massive distraction for employees and a waste of time for no productive gain.
This guy was outing co-workers for private, outside the company conversations (wholly) on an internal blog repeatedly for years.
He even setup an internal service to track this.
That this went on for YEARS before Google stepped in to stop it and note he wasn't given a formal reprimand or demoted - they just asked him to stop it and he quit because he felt he couldn't espouse and enforce his personal views on the company ON company time and the company dime!
It seems to me the root of the problem is the fact that companies want to hire based on "merit" but that is contradictory to diversity because external to the company, educational opportunities are not equal and penalize people that to an extent can be connected with their diversity. Since a given corporation doesn't see itself as responsible for the lack of diversity in the surrounding society, it doesn't see that it should be the one to fix the problem. And since the problem is external to individual companies, and it isn't being held to account (and in fact, often made worse by government undermining educational institutions in favor of moneyed interests), the problem isn't getting fixed so people are looking to blame at the result rather than at the cause, because it is the result that individual people actually have to deal with.
How much money did you pay for that brainwashing?
Delicious. So good. You should try it.
Damore makes a pretty sophomoric error several times, conflating gender and sex
Oh, so then I guess what Google is attempting is not 50/50 split of SEX between males and females, but 50/50 split of Gender. Well that's easy, since Gender is a social construct and is fluid on a spectrum. Just say you have 50/50 and BOOM, diversity achieved.
Oh wait... doesn't that just support the Gender binary ? BIGOT ! BIGOT !
Maybe your education as a "evolutionary biologist" isn't as great as you think it is. I suggest you actually read the memo, rather than reading a Wired story about what a Journalist thinks of the memo he probably didn't even read.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
White people have enslaved other races for centuries and enjoyed the benefits of doing so. Simply removing slavery doesn't magically undo the centuries of subjugation and abuse, white people today are still benefiting from past slavery and there is also the important issue of justice: white people never truly paid for what they did
Assigning collective guilt is one of those bulletproof ways of showing what an asshole you are.
Ezekiel 23:20
the only reason he can sue is because California is a left wing state. The right wing states don't have any protections for political views.
I do wish people would stop dumping on right wingers though. As a left winger I don't find it hard to point out why their beliefs are objectively wrong (I'll spare everyone that in this thread) but looking down on them or worse threatening violence doesn't help. Yes, right wingers are wrong. As the saying goes reality as a well known liberal bias. I think we're much better off letting facts speak for themselves then going off half cocked. We're just feeding into a persecution complex encouraged by right wing propaganda...
All that said, I can understand some of the fear and frustration on the part of the left. We had literal Nazis marching in Charlottesville and a President who called them good people on the sly. We've got guys like Alex Jones engaging in extremely thinly veiled anti semitic rants who pull in millions of subscribers. And let's not forget how many of our closest allies treat women (Saudi Arabia comes to mind). Meanwhile Trump ran on populism but has promised to sign any immigration bill that passes his desk.... Don't forget Bernie called out H1-B abuse but still lost out.
What I'm saying is there's a lot to be scared of if you're on the left and a lot to be scared of if you're just plain a working class American. People react badly to fear. We could use a good, stable leader who genuinely has people's interests at heart to calm it all down. Sadly it looks like the Dems are going to give us more milk-toast right wing blue dogs...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
the goal of these diversity talks is to get more skilled candidates by any means necessary. Tech Businesses are concerned that women and minorities don't enter tech because of a hostile work environment. Having worked in lots of all male tech shops yeah, they're right. There's a lot of casual sexual harassment that turns women off. What we men call 'locker room talk'.
Now, that said their goals are not noble. The point is to have more people to hire from to depress wages. Period. They're not doing this for diversity or SWJism, they're doing it for cheap labor. As always, follow the money.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's "shitholes" now, you insensitive clod!
The insights into Google "culture" provided by screenshots and quotes in the Damore lawsuit file tells another story. Google does actively promote discussions on diversity and Google HR does take sides. I pity the white males who think this is anything but a hostile takeover.
...rather then if they're skilled and the right fit.
Every non-white males that interview for us do not have the skills or are not a good fit into our corporate culture. It just works out that way. And as James Damore cites in his memo show, only young white men are capable of doing tech work.
Go ahead and PROVE that I'm discriminating again minorities. Those dingy black broads in HR can suck my dick.
Of course people in a discussion are going to be making false assumptions and drawing on incomplete knowledge. So what?
Firing people for expressing a viewpoint after inviting them to a discussion and providing what they thought was a safe space for expression really should be unacceptable in the work place. At the societal level I find what Google did to be reprehensible and unacceptable and deserving of a substantial civil penalty and a blemish against their previously good reputation.
Beyond that, the overall point that there are biological differences between men and women that could impact job fitness should be part of any serious discussion about how to improve workplace diversity. It appears that the entire viewpoint is being excluded from discussion because it makes some people feel uncomfortable.
And whether or not it is worth the resources to try (or what levels or resources should be expended) to increase workplace diversity are valid viewpoints for discussion. Regardless of whether it is openly discussed, I assure you that companies are going to decide at some level what level of resources it is worth. If it isn't openly discussed then the result is likely to be much lower than the level of effort might otherwise be.
I disagree with the viewpoint that it is not worth trying to increase workplace diversity, but it is far more destructive to real workplace diversity to not have the discussion about what it will actually take to hire more women that are good fits for the job. And we need to have the discussion about how jobs themselves should change so that the requirements and success criteria are better fits for more women.
There probably are unnecessary requirements with a biological gender or sex bias baked into many professions. We are moving beyond the blatant "You need to have a penis" requirement, but that doesn't mean there aren't more subtle biological differences that have baked themselves into the workplace. Ultimately though we do have jobs that do appear to be better fits for more women or better fits for more men and there are biological differences that may account for those disparities which we shouldn't be afraid to discuss and hopefully come to fact and unbiased study based conclusions about what we should do about it.
They just didn't want to hear the FACT that only twenty something white males are the only ones capable of doing tech work.
If an old guy, woman, or black person comes in for an interview, I ask them to do some simple problems like write a relational database in x86 assembly while I go get a cup of coffee. They can't do it. Seriously? That's something that can be knocked off in 10 minutes.
They lack the skills. And they come in wearing suits - they don't fit in. Or they wear jeans - wrong. Business casual? Plah-ease. Or they belong to these religious cults that would make our company look bad.
Unless those people get their act together, we are gonna have mostly young white men in tech.
An anti-diversity troll is not engaging in pro-diversity discussions--no matter how slimy it's worded.
I bet you'd like to bake some crackers in the oven...
You also need to realize that hiring isn't objective - it's the complete opposite. That's where the outrage is coming here on Slashdot. Most of the folks here think recruitment is completely objective and rational and diversity programs force unqualified people into the ranks because of the SJWs just like to give them a hard time.
What I think would be a great experiment is to assign numbers to resumes and block out the names to eliminate any gender or racial bias. And then eliminate the face to face interview - at least with the hiring manager. Then let's see what happens. They may get a black Grace Hopper.
See, folks unconsciously make the decision to hire someone as soon as they see them and then use the interview to justify the decision they already made. People do that with most decisions in their lives (kahneman et al).
Because the fact is, one doesn't KNOW for sure if someone can do the job until they are on the job. Obviously weeding out folks who have no background or what have you; but my point is clear I think.
And let's face it, it's human nature to be biased against folks who are different from us - i.e. young white guys are gonna be more inclined to hire other young white guys.
And let's also face the fact that white guys - especially upper middle class white guys (where most tech workers from from) - have been handed opportunities that they don't even realize but like to believe that everything they've accomplished 100% of their grit and effort. Ya know, they worked hard in choosing those well-to-do white parents that nurtured them, taught them a work ethic, guided them and made sure they were born male.
..instead of focusing on who's diverse or who isn't and if and whether that is really needed to be addressed in either way perhaps, every time it comes up its seen as a huge: -no profit, -only hurts the bottom line, -causes issues among the staff, - big distraction from the daily business on hand scenario. I could be crazy but maybe the higher ups just want to get some stuff done instead of figuring out which half of the workforce gets to vent this week. Maybe that has something to do with it being discouraged is all I'm saying, unless your boss pays you to come in and complain all day about things not related to what he hired you to do.
The right have controlled America since Clinton took office by moving the Democratic party right to forge the alliance that won him the election. They own the State legislatures, the House, Senate and Presidency. Even Obama was pretty right of center. I think you're mistaking "Seeing a lot of left wing social issues on TV and in movies" with real political power. The only thing the left hasn't lost ground on in the last 30 years is gay rights. Every other issue (Abortion, Gun Control, Healthcare, minimum wage, the Wars, economic regulation, etc) they've been beaten back. Even the ACA was a desperate and lousy compromise and the left giving up on Single Payer once again.
Part of the trouble is when Clinton moved the Democratic party right the Republicans had to follow suit in order to maintain their brand. That's a big part of where the hard right shift came from. It's why you see folks like Roy Moore winning primaries and only losing the election because of a sex scandal (and even then only by 1.5 points).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You must realize that you're a racist, right?
You're no different than the self righteous racists attacking black people for their supposed moral failings.
The fact that you're about to reply with your reasons why white people really are the devil only proves my point.
Hatred and racism is a terrible thing.
As Martin Luther King said, hate begets hate. All you do by intentionally allowing your bigotry to shine through is help justify other bigots.
To hell with all of you.
we have another employee suing because he felt discriminated-against because of policies designed to increase diversity.
That's exactly backwards.
Damore is suing because he was *FOR* promoting diversity, and was fired for discussing ideas related to that. That's literally the whole basis of his lawsuit.
Any discrimination against him was not because of the policies related to diversity, but because the people did not like his ideas related to promoting diversity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Premise is bullshit.
But this is great distraction.
Don't think that the State is only the government. Remember that the Cultural Revolution infiltrated all institutions; we're looking at the American version now.
You are not paid because you are worth anything as humab beings. You are paid to act as code/design repairing machine who just happen to be human. Do what you are paid and say nothing, these rights are only reserved to others who are superior to you.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
> the only way to be just is to account for the historical oppression that whites have inflicted on people of color.
Who cares about being 'just'?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Similarly, in the case of Black americans with ancestry rooted in the slave trade era, they are benefiting from having had their ancestors brought to a place that is an objectively better state today than whatever their point of origin. They most certainly suffered more along that timeline but are we able to quantify whay is owed and what by circumstance has already been paid? Who keeps the tally? And if the answer is noone balancing the books, then isn't what you're saying less about justice than revenge?
No, we'll simply continue to ignore you. It's that easy.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
To sit back and watch as slashdot, which has become a cesspool of libertarian idealists, undiagnosed aspergers cases, and racist reddit dropouts, attempt to discuss this. Slashdot has a rusty iron rod up it's ass when it comes to racism or sexism, so let's see if anyone takes this guy's claims seriously or has a meaningful discussion about diversity in tech.
We'll probably see idiots screaming about "SJW's!!!", which is what passes for intellectual discussion on Slashdot these days. So sad.
That shit's been going on for more that a decade and why I changed my password and threw it away along with the email address that was associated with it.
you're missing the point. The woman you work with are like that because if they weren't, if they were uncomfortable with locker room talk, they'd leave. That is the conclusion of hiring mangers the world over. It's held up and born out in a lot of research/surveys. Heck, I'd be uncomfortable in that environment (I'm a bit of a Melvin) and I'm a 6' tall 220lb guy.
Furthermore, something we tend to forget (or conscientiously ignore) is that virtually any man is a physical threat to a woman. There's a super creepy scene in Hulu's 'The Handmaid's Tale' that illustrated this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just because you're not talking about trump and gold bars doesn't mean we can't tell you're a paid faggot from off site soviet russia.
I have a dream that people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
Debate.
white people also enslaved other white people.....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Here's a woman who has internalized blackness.
If only it was big enough for anyone to FIND.
So the outcome is YMMV if you're employed at Google. Duh. If one out of five employees is told to stop posting about diversity because it starts flame wars, and another one of five is getting paid a cash bonus when they threaten white male employees with violence, firing, and discrimination if they talk against the status quo about diversity, it still means Google is still promoting and engaging in systematic and illegal discriminatory practices as per the class action lawsuit.
All the AA regulations say/do is that a company has to keep records of it's hiring decisions. At no point in time did AA have quotas. That was a myth. This isn't to say individual institutions might not have done quotas, but it wasn't AA that made them do it. It was a private decision (and also one that, had anyone bothered, could be challenged and ruled illegal. Yes, being a White Male is a protected class).
You're fury is being directed towards Affirmative Action so you'll ignore the real reason why you're not getting ahead: That your productivity no longer keeps pace with your wages.
The point is to divide the working class into castes of some kind. America does it with race. India does it with a literal caste system. Japan used Buddhism to create an underclass deemed 'unclean' and the UK had classes. It's the same pattern over and over and over again. The aristocracy is few but they claim anywhere from 50%-80% of the wealth. You can't do that unless you divide and conquer. Don't fall for it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
He wasn't fired. He left on his owner accord because "people are jerks for not thinking like him". He kept string up drama across the entire company and it was becoming more of an issue than whatever non-ideal situation the company had in regards to diversity. He wanted to argue and feel important.
Unfortunately he was brainwashed by the U.S. public education system - so that means that you and I paid for his brainwashing.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Funny how you don't have to talk to most social justice warriors for more than about 5 minutes to see that they're far less interested in achieving anything resembling justice than they are in just plain hurting white men.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences
It is, actually - that is, in fact, the definition.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
It bothers me that Americans don't understand what the term freedom of speech implies
It bothers me that so many liberals (of all people) don't realize that there's the first amendment, which describes freedom of speech from a legal perspective, and freedom of speech as a general concept, and that the two things can be discussed completely independently.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Actually it's even more than that. The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom from consequences of speech, but freedom of speech as a concept - an ideal rather than a legal concept - is more general than that, and that's probably what the grandparent is referring to. It's disturbing that so many liberals can't comprehend the difference between a social ideal and something enshrined in law - to them, the only way to accomplish anything is to put the government in charge of it.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Considering that you think a black man taking a knee during the national anthem should be illegal and you mourn the inability to fine or imprison people, it sounds like you're one of the busybodies who've shredded the First Amendment.
Funny how that works both ways, ain't it?
"white people never truly paid for what they did"
I feel like you represent here the deeply held belief (not always said out load) of many (not all) black people in the US today...
Remind me again why I should be punished for what someone else's ancestors did? I say that because as a white guy, my ancestors immigrated after the Civil War - there's no slave blood in my genes.
Combined with the sense of vengeance, could you see why the other side might not be so eager to empower you to punish them for stuff they didn't do?
They certainly plant those seeds starting early these days, but you have to go to secondary education the get the whole 9 yards. We'll probably end up paying for it when they default on their publicly guaranteed loans.
Be sure to cry more about white people voting against their best interests next election.
Just remember: you're the one who decided a strong person of color don't need no allies.
Say's he who thinks that liberal-bashing qualifies as intelligent discussion. You sound like a typical Fox-Bot who can't think for himself.
FYI - We're gonna crowbar Mayor McCheese out of that fucking White House. Just you wait.
Sincerely,
One o' them thar college edumucated liberals.
sorry "tech bro", not buying it. and what the fuck is a "tech bro"? fucking millenials, ruining the world one day at a time.
My white ancestors were enslaved, starved to death, and oppressed for hundreds of years, and only managed to finally throw off their chains in the early 20th century. We didn't get to the U.S. until the 1920s. How much more am I required to pay?
I'm just asking.
Minorities do have a right to exist - in countries where they arenâ(TM)t minorities.
Black slavers were socialized into acting according to a white system of values
lol. This bit of historical revisionism brought to you by the author of "We Wuz Kangs 'n' Shit".
All the AA regulations say/do is that a company has to keep records of it's hiring decisions. At no point in time did AA have quotas. That was a myth. This isn't to say individual institutions might not have done quotas, but it wasn't AA that made them do it. It was a private decision (and also one that, had anyone bothered, could be challenged and ruled illegal. Yes, being a White Male is a protected class).
This is what is cause "plausible deniability". We didn't TELL them to use quotas, but we would sure as hell have used those statistics against them in any lawsuit that came around. How do you provably show that you do not discriminate against minorities? You show that you hire and promote minorities just like majority. You can't just say, "but...but...we have some black managers and female engineers." The SJWs will immediately turn to the statistics.
The same problem exists when declaring that one is not a racist. Somehow it is a negative to proclaim that you have close associations with minorities. But, how else do you fight back against the claims of racism?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Altheide: Given multiple chances and still had more room to go after being told. Damore: Terminated on the first memo.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
My suggestion is that if you donâ(TM)t like the way white people run things, donâ(TM)t live in countries that are majority white. Simple as that.
Nah. When it becomes majority minority Iâ(TM)ll just leave, and laugh as you turn what was once the most powerful nation on earth into a third-world shit-hole, just like you did to South Africa and Rhodesia. This time, donâ(TM)t expect whitey to bail you out. If nothing else, weâ(TM)ve learned our lesson this time.
Cool. You aren't interested in solving oppression.
You just want to be the next oppressor.
Will be voting for Trump next time around because of psychopaths like you.
These people are not liberals. They are leftist and Communists. They are as much an enemy to liberalism as to Capitalism and Fascism.
Leftists are evil, oppressive, violent, and irrational.
How fitting you choose MLK weekend to completely disagree with him and his life's work.
No need to be so racist by judging/classifying current individuals based on what a completely separate set of individuals did centuries ago merely because they share a similar skin pigment. This distinction applies to most of your comment.
Also, technically factually inaccurate. Blacks did the vast majority of "enslaving", whites were primarily on the "purchasers of slavery" side of the transactions. Actually, if you look at all of history and the world, whites were minorities on the purchasing side as well. You have to limit yourself to only the slave trade to the U.S. in a specific couple of centuries at most in order to make a claim whites did most of the purchasing.
Anyway, the "effects" of slavery on blacks in the United States had primarily diminished by the late 50s. The current negative effects are more associated with the "War on Poverty" started by Johnson.
Fun fact, did you know slavery still exists today? How about you direct your rage at the people actually enslaving people right now instead of blaming individuals who had nothing to do with it?
The right own virtually all forms of government in this country. And don't kid yourself, Google is a mega corp. They're not terrible left wing themselves. Not being homophobic does not not make you left wing.
And the media has a strong right wing bias on economic issues. There was never any serious discussion about the wars and they colluded with the Government to avoid showing soldier's caskets coming home. They worked hard to sell the Walstreet bail out and they're working hard to sell Republican tax cuts for the wealthy while ignoring Paul Ryan going around talking about entitlement reform (read: ending SS & Medicare for anyone under 55). The Media is hard right on the economy, and we shouldn't be surprised. Look who owns them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just a thought, but isnâ(TM)t it doing the world a disfavor by allowing all the most motivated and hard working people to immigrate to the US? I mean, if they couldnâ(TM)t leave and stayed home they would have to work to fix their own country.
If they made their own country more like America, then they wouldnâ(TM)t WANT to immigrate.
I think itâ(TM)s kind of racist to enable the best and most motivated people leave their own nation just so they can vote Democrat here in the US, donâ(TM)t you?
Was that before he was banging some of his flock? You know... Ladies who weren't his wife.
... the only way to be just is to account for the historical oppression that whites have inflicted on people of color.
If we accept this racial serial-guilt idea of yours, then there's the question of those peoples, cultures, religions, and tribes that "people of color" killed, enslaved, and oppressed for centuries before white Europeans arrived in any numbers. What do "people of color" owe *those* people in reparations?
I mean, I'm sure you're not a racist hypocrite that would judge your race by different standards than you would judge others...right?
Holy shit! Have you never learned any human history at all?
EVERY race, ethnicity, culture, religion, etc (except geographically isolated homogeneous cultures that never interact with others) has oppressed another at some point in their history, usually on multiple occasions through history. "People of color" are no exception.
If you want to go down that path you end up back at the fucking Neanderthals, FFS!
Go fucking read, learn, and think for yourself instead of regurgitating what other people tell you, you lazy git! If you think the people telling you this horseshit have your best interests in mind, I have a bridge to sell you. The path you're on makes it quite likely you'll either die young to make someone else richer and more powerful, or else live long enough to finally wake up and then hate yourself for the life you wasted.
First off, FUCK YOU for bringing my beloved Arduinos into this.
Secondly, the biggest pusher, cheerleader, and pioneer in the arena is LADY ADA, you dumb bastard!
Also, you have to turn the whiteness filter off on your youtube account, because most Arduino videos don't even have sound nor show a person. Many just show people's arms and guess what? They're mostly made in China. Those arms you see aren't just a really tanned white dude.
But anyway I can tell you have a lot of pent up guilt about how you treat others, since you get so fired up by this subject. You should probably reflect on that and adjust your life accordingly. Even if you don't, you can leave Arduinos out of this bullshit.
Y'all pretend that being "neutral" is not inherently racist, I'm starting to think that's less stupidity and more maliciousness, I bet you KNOW you have white privilege and you're pretending you're all righteous and just only to maintain your white privilege.
Nobody is created equal. There are likely many hundreds of millions of people at least on the planet who are way worse off than you will ever be regardless of pigmentation of your skin. Saying x person somehow has it better or easier is an entirely worthless exercise regardless of underlying factual basis. You play the hand your dealt. Whine all you want about your luck or how unfair your conditions. The cold hard reality is nobody gives a shit and most likely millions would line up in a heartbeat for the opportunity to be in your shoes.
White people have enslaved other races for centuries and enjoyed the benefits of doing so.
Who gives a fuck what long dead people did? I wouldn't visit Japan and expect nor want them to apologize for their unprovoked transgressions against my family.
Simply removing slavery doesn't magically undo the centuries of subjugation and abuse,
German exchange students are still paying the price. Hitler jokes ... they just won't stop.
white people today are still benefiting from past slavery and there is also the important issue of justice: white people never truly paid for what they did.
Slavery is still very much alive and well with tens of millions of actual living current slaves on this planet... but hey feel free to bitch about debts owed by dead people.
Sorry tech bros, but losing a few job opportunities is a pretty low price compared to the way white people enslaved, raped, massacred and tortured people of color all throughout history. You can complain about being oppressed by minorities when you're in chains, picking their cotton and with your backs full of scars.
Fuck guilt by race. Fuck guilt by tribe. Fuck guilt by family. Fuck guilt by friends. Fuck guilt by ancestors. Fuck guilt by history. Fuck guilt by profession. Fuck guilt by geography. Fuck guilt by anyone who is not themselves guilty.
White people culturally appropriating Dr King's speech in order to push white supremacy is a hallmark of white fragility.
Congrats on outing yourself as a racist.
Damore's memo said that Google's diversity initiatives were half-assed because they ignored root causes of lack of diversity. And Damore then went on to suggest other methods of improving diversity which would comport with the current understanding of human Biology and how it influences psychology. This memo seems to re-enforce Damore's point rather than counter it. Damore tried to discuss an alternative approach to diversity initiatives. This memo tried to discuss lack of support for diversity initiatives. Both situations seem in the spirit of "don't talk, don't think -- just shut up and listen to what we have to say" from Google. How is this CEO still surviving? In the time that he managed to nearly ruin the Google brand , the new Microsoft CEO managed to bring it back from the ashes. This demonstrates a complete lack of leadership abilities of Pichai.
That's funny coming from someone whose country most likely abolished slavery many centuries after mine, but whatever floats your boat...
Ezekiel 23:20
this is how you make it possible to enforce anti-discrimination laws. It's necessary when you've got institutionalized racism. E.g. when racism is built into your institutions. Otherwise companies just say "no qualified blacks applied". Companies are actually doing the exact same thing right now with H1-Bs and getting away with it because the law isn't enforced. But in the absence of the paper trail it becomes damn near impossible if you ever do want to enforce it. You can just lie and say the person never applied. Bog the case down indefinitely.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's different in Europe.
A comedian (of all the people...) put it correctly in my opinion. Americans deal in terms of contracts with each other. With Europeans it's more in terms of relationships. Americans want to know what they can expect from their partner, they want it defined, they want the borders set and they want to know what's yours and what's mine. You can expect this from me, I will expect that from you, we both know that, we both accept that and that's all there is.
If you try that in Europe, you'll notice that quite a bit of hostility is going to meet you. Yes, even in a business environment. We don't like hard definitions. Everything here is kinda, sorta, maybe and possibly. And a lot remains undefined because both sides enjoy a bit of leeway when it comes to how you treat each other. It's actually pretty amazing that it still works out. We don't have a law concerning freedom of speech. Yet still we somehow have it. And everyone knows just how far they may go. Surprisingly, also everyone not only knows that unwritten law, people also comply with it and they can get VERY upset if you dare to ignore it.
That's really hard to describe. You'd have to experience that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Anyone is welcome to leave white countries for Haiti, which is not a s h I t h o l e but a non white paradise as we all know. Show them!
He's a troll.
I'm willing to bet he's not even a real n1gg3r.
No. Next question.
As a matter of historical fact, there were very few slaves enslaved by "white races". The vast majority of African slaves that were brought by "white races" were purchased from Arabs and Africans that lived on the coast.
Of course you will never believe that as it does not suit your racist philosophy.
Diversity is code for anti-white.
People
only cure their own evils. The US has not made Holocaust denial a
punishable offence - it is somebody else's problem. The US has not made
glorification of the Sati custom a punishable offence - they have other
fish to fry. The US banned slavery, after practising it for centuries -
this has been the demon in the US and they are exorcising it.
Indians and Germans don't get to gloat about the "failure" of the US to
draft certain criminal offences in their Constitution. And vice versa.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I was mostly reacting to the implication that US' future is necessarily my future (that I will be "dragged into kicking and screaming"). Seeing as we happily avoided being pulled into USSR's future a few decades ago, we're not overjoyed at the idea.
Ezekiel 23:20
Either his work was made before Google lost it's sanity to SJW's or he's wrong by default. Just being white and male is enough nowadays.
What is definition of diversity, I'd really like to know. This term is being thrown around alot lately, but I have yet to see a definition.
Race shouldn't be a basis to judge someone's character....complains when conversations based on race favoritism are shut down. Make up your mind, you can't have it both ways. "Diversity" for the sake of diversity is stupid....hire people based on their ability to do their job, not what color their skin is or where they're from.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Women don't hate sex these days, they hate unattractive men wanting sex from them.
And "attractive" means successful, powerful, rich. Because of the economy and widening wealth inequality today, there are fewer rich powerful men for them to fuck.
Sorry, guys, you just have nothing to offer women anymore in exchange for sex - so you're thrown into the "creep" box.
White people have enslaved other races for centuries and enjoyed the benefits of doing so. Simply removing slavery doesn't magically undo the centuries of subjugation and abuse, white people today are still benefiting from past slavery and there is also the important issue of justice: white people never truly paid for what they did
Assigning collective guilt is one of those bulletproof ways of showing what an asshole you are.
What is even more hilarious about Anonymous Coward's position is that it takes no account of history overall. Africans were some of the original slave "owners". White people being held in slavery has been a thing for most of, including recent, history; especially in the middle east where white women were in great demand as concubines (still are but the market is not public anymore)... but let's forget about all that and insist that white men must submit to slavery again to "pay" for "their" recent sins... Even though no white man that is alive today had any part of what previous generations have done.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Hiring someone that is a certain race/gender or more specifically that is NOT a specific race or gender to create an artificially diverse population where it wouldn't otherwise exist doesn't prevent racism or sexism it IS racism or sexism. The only way to actually end these things is to forget about "pro-diversity" campaigns altogether and hire/promote solely based on skillset, experience, credentials and on the job performance.
Scientists are starting to push back too. As are skeptics like Micheal Shermer.
I back Google on this one.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Since white men overwhelmingly dominate the power, money (and violence) in the world, perhaps it's not that they want to hurt white men but rather want break up that dominance.