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Google CEO Sundar Pichai Says He Does Not Regret Firing James Damore (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded today to the firing of employee James Damore over his controversial memo on workplace diversity, stating that while he does not regret the decision, he regrets that people misunderstood it as a politically motivated event. Speaking in a live conversation with journalist and Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, MSNBC host Ari Melber, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in San Francisco, Pichai said that the decision to fire Damore was about ensuring women at Google felt like the company was committed to creating a welcoming environment.
"I regret that people misunderstand that we may have made this for a political belief one way or another," Pichai said. "It's important for the women at Google, and all the people at Google, that we want to make a inclusive environment." When pressed by Swisher on the issue of regret, Pichai stated more definitively, "I don't regret it." Wojcicki, who has spoken publicly about how Damore's memo affected her personally, followed up with, "I think it was the right decision."
"I regret that people misunderstand that we may have made this for a political belief one way or another," Pichai said. "It's important for the women at Google, and all the people at Google, that we want to make a inclusive environment." When pressed by Swisher on the issue of regret, Pichai stated more definitively, "I don't regret it." Wojcicki, who has spoken publicly about how Damore's memo affected her personally, followed up with, "I think it was the right decision."
Of course it was political. How stupid do they think we are?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When facts meet politics, politics win. All it shows is that Google is more concerned about optics than making decisions based on facts.
But the way this was all handled was utter bullshit.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He, Pichai probably cannot say he regrets the firing, on the advice of his and Alphabet Inc.'s legal staffs.
You lost Hillary, get the fuck outta here!
No!!! You right wingers, you cost me everything!!! I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!!!!
Sundar, It was politically motivated. Your attempt to spin it otherwise demonstrates your naïveté.
Gang:
Please do not discuss, or comment in any way, about ongoing issues we have in the courts.
Kthnxbye.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Calm down Hillary. You're embarrassing yourself.
Engineering is hard-core. If you mess up, tons of money is lost and people may die. It is not a role for anybody that needs to be "welcome". It is a role for people that do understand things, see past the bullshit and can get things to work. And also for people that leave when the bullshit gets too much. Of course, any actual engineering set-up worthwhile working for will cherish and treasure its engineers, whether male, female or anything else. It just does not matter. Skill, insight and capability do.
Of course, most people, like this "CEO" are incapable of seeing this. If they take over, an engineering company becomes a has-been. Because while a good engineer will always find a reasonable job anywhere, these people depend on scamming people out of their money for sub-par performance and after a while, customers wake up to what is going on.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Cite some actual words from the memo that were wrong.
Adblocking Google s**t never felt better
The thing is that Google firing Damore appears to have been illegal. He was asked to provide feedback, he wrote a memo describing non-discriminatory ways to meet Google's diversity goals, then the memo was leaked and he was hounded in the press and at the workplace. One of the emails in his complaint is from a supervisor at Google threatening him, after all.
Regarding the broader point, there are philosophical reasons not to have a 'right to not be offended'. The fact that other people were trying to engage in the heckler's veto and make a big fuss to drive out people they disagree with is something that's often being missed her. There are large free speech concerns if people are allowed to silence others by throwing a big enough fuss.
Google is a hostile workplace--for people like Damore. The toxic people who cannot remain civil in the face of disagreement should be the ones who are removed & punished. Anything else will result in a race to the bottom.
The courts will tear Google a new one over the firing of Damore, and this statement will not help Google at all, to put it mildly.
Of course he doesn't regret it at this time. Nothing has happened yet. Once this goes to trial he might be singing a different tune. It's the little things that tend to set big things in motion. I've been hearing talk of regulating google and facebook for several months now.
Once the trial starts everything that has happened will go on public record. That might be the tipping to make congress ether start regulating google or break up google. The latter being the most likely of the two.
So, he might not regret it now but the fat lady is far from singing on this issue
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
The case here against Google is not good. They f-ed up badly, are very likely to lose. Dalmore is only one guy, but I'm sure he will get plenty of legal help.
After Google loses, Pichai may very likely change his mind. At least privately.
Donald is here??? That stupid fucker cost me the election!! It was mine and he fucking ruined it! I HATE HIM I HATE HIM I HATE HIM!!!!!
Da fuq?
Like, political as in politics. But it was totally about internal company politics.
Just found the most stupid AC for today. Congrats.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's 2018, not 1968.
You've had 50 years to adjust.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You aren't fooling anyone, traitor. We know you are the reason it smells like Rusisan hooker piss in here!
When you want to know who has power over you, look only to those who you are not allowed to criticize.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Where is this mythical school where athletes and red-necks have to learn science?
Damon was accused of a several misogynistic beliefs when his essay was leaked. Was this one of them?
I haven't read his essay so I don't know if he used "capable" to describe a real intrinsic circumstance (eg. pregnancy), an imagined intrinsic circumstance (sexual discrimination) or an extrinsic circumstance (eg. female athletes having fewer fans than male athletes.)
Just makes me wonder how immensely stupid Pichai is to even comment on litigation. This one comment about not regretting the firing may backfire tremendously if Damore prevails and damages for Google are assessed.
People massively underestimate the value of getting women in tech. Women are no less capable, there's plenty of studies to bear that out. But they're massively under represented. Get them to show up and you'd have a large increase in tech workers which translates into lower pay all around. Supply and Demand.
This isn't politics, it's business.
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Just found the most stupid logged in post today. Congrats.
Encourage the big boring brand to become totally fixated on telling the world about how good it is.
:)
Then look for the people with skills who can work and bring them over to your company.
Is that virtue signalling brand is a really slow, boring place to work?
Your band offers tech and more new tech. The other big brand has long boring meetings about telling the world about how good it is.
What to join a fun, new, dynamic, innovative tech brand? Want to sit in a meeting after boring meeting on the optics of branding and what words to use?
Welcome to an actual tech company that still considers merit and skill? Welcome to the big brand that tells the world about the brand?
Boring big brand meetings on using words all week? A boring big brand that has to stay on message?
Find that fun new tech company thats all about the tech?
Start your own company and get smart people by having no boring meetings
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Speaking of which, here's a copy of the memo and a link to Damore's site, both of which are quite hard to find on Google for some reason, even though other search engines find the site just fine.
It's amazing how many people call it an "anti-diversity screed" who either haven't read it or who badly misconstrue the part where he tries to say that Google could be more welcoming of women by making it so it's not expected to work 60-hour weeks with no human interaction and fail to realize that the overall thrust of the paper is to find non-discriminatory ways to make Google friendlier to women.
Full of gaps, leaps and ambiguities? Good, if it's full of them you'll have no problems showing three quotes of each. Or are you just full of crap?
News at a 11 ..leven...leven...leven
So what if I piss on everything? Donald probably does it too!! I fucking hate Donald and I will piss on everything and Bill cant stop me, fuck him. Fuck it all I SHOULD BE PRESIDENT FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!
You aren't fooling anyone Moscow Donald.
Even your Russian hooker wife won't touch you so you are stuck with washed up old porn stars, but at least they know how to put on a good piss show like Vladimir Putin gave you in Moscow.
Isn't he Indian? The rest of them working in CA also have no idea regarding our culture's standards on freedom of speech.
Admitting that he should have publicly fired the person who took the non-memo that was actually an internal G+ discussion item and waved it like a bloody flag to clickbait shitposters would be an admission that Damore has a case.
But that is precisely what he should have done. He should have called a town hall meeting, asked the person to come to the stage and publicly fired them without any severance with a stern warning that anyone who decides to go activist and take dirty laundry to the media instead of working through official channels will be punished even harder because now they know that Google won't tolerate it.
If they can't handle someone writing a memo, and a difference of opinion, the company will never make it. They will spend all their capital fighting lawsuits, have managers who are afraid to make decisions lest they get fired for having an opinion, employees fearful of any controversy, groupthink decision making, and a user base that will move on now that Google seems entrenched, old fashioned, and not worth bothering with anymore.
Oh well it was a good 20 years right? Don't be evil and all that bullshit.
He should step aside and let a woman take his job.
With a lawsuit pending, I'm amazed counsel advised it was OK for him to comment.
I don't get his upside to talking publicly.
Somebody tell me the last time a sitting CEO of a very large profitable company admitted to a recent mistake.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Eww, I just found a copycat faggot.
GG, no re.
We could have 100% women in tech tomorrow, if every man would just identify as a woman. After all, being a woman is all in the mind - because reasons.
A company can culture its environment, just like hobby lobby can. You can't force a business to hire solely on technical merit, they want synergy as well. HR exists for a reason.
Pichai must be feeling some heat over this or he would have simply ignored it. As it is, he is putting it back on the news.
Good.
Sadly, Danmore is not naturally aggressive. I would have made very public statements that Prichai was a malicious liar. Google tells us what to read. We need to trust Google. You cannot trust a malicious liar. That would have got headlines. And if Prichai sued, he would have to attempt to justify his position publically. (The lie is that that Danmore denigrated women, or that he said that the women working for Google were not properly qualified.)
These types of posts are bait because the karma system on /. is controlled by people who have positive karma themselves. If you take the bait of the wrong politics you get down-voted to karma Hell.
The now-infamous “Google memo,” written by engineer James Damore, argued against diversity initiatives at Google and said that female engineers were less capable of leading others.
They must be talking about a different memo. Because his memo did not does say that female engineers are less capable of leading. The closest thing I can find is this:
Women, on average, have more...extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
James Damoore said nothing about women being less capable. Breaking it down, he is nicely say that women tend not to be assholes, and that assholes get leadership positions. Anyone looking at our current sitting president would be forced to agree with him.
If James Damoore gets 1 dollar for every every media outlet that slandered him like this, he could buy Google.
Amonst other things, Danmore said that women in general are more prone to neurosis.
You will disagree, because that statement is politically incorrect. It does not matter what the actual evidence is. We deny what we do not want to hear.
When engineers deny what they do not want to hear, things do not work. Bridges fall down. So there is a different psychology between an engineer and most other people. Facts actually matter in engineering.
Details also matter. Danmore never said that all women are more prone to neurosis. Just that more are. Those are two different statements. But to a non engineer, they both mush to the same thing "Women...neurosis".
Hence the disconnect.
Make me feel better about Google, and my respect level for them was already sub-terrestrial. They are dispicable.
... left after Damore was fired due to the fact? I know this might be slightly off-topic, but maybe some Googler could anonymously give a comment on this whole Damore semi-witchhunt thing and how it goes down at Google itself? Like, in real life?
Curious to know.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
worst CEO in tech says what?
Is it wrong that I love when you call me that? God I love feeling like a winner again if only for a moment. I want to fuck him ok!? Bill wonâ(TM)t fuck me anymore, Huma wonâ(TM)t fuck me anymore, I want him to go it. I want OH I HATE HIM I HATE HIM I HATE HIM...but Iâ(TM)m hungry.
By eliminating dissenting opinions? I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Wow. And on that note, I will be voting Republican from now on. Hillary, you have gone insane.
is engaged in that kind of engineering. Their autonomous car division. The rest sell ads.
That said, it goes both ways. If the Alpha male screws up and the beta finds the fuck up your hard-core environment can break down when the beta keeps his mouth shut to avoid conflict (or because he knows damn well nobody's gonna listen to him since he's not a jock).
Hell, on a smaller scale, who here reading this hasn't kept their mouth shut about some impending doom at work because it wasn't worth the hassle to speak up.
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The now-infamous “Google memo,” written by engineer James Damore, argued against diversity initiatives at Google and said that female engineers were less capable of leading others.
They must be talking about a different memo. Because his memo did not does say that female engineers are less capable of leading. The closest thing I can find is this:
Women, on average, have more...extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
James Damoore said nothing about women being less capable. Breaking it down, he is nicely say that women tend not to be assholes, and that assholes get leadership positions. Anyone looking at our current sitting president would be forced to agree with him.
If James Damoore gets 1 dollar for every every media outlet that slandered him like this, he could buy Google.
Not to mention, it wasn't a memo.
the downfall of Radio shack was device convergence. There are just plain fewer devices to sell. My cell phone is a radio, a phone, a GPS, a mini-computer, a PDA, a games machine, a video chat client, an mp3 player, a portable video player. I could go on. The only one that survived was Best Buy who made it through mostly by having the floor space to sell 60" TVs when they suddenly got cheap and everyone was ditching their tubes.
Hobbyists couldn't save Radio Shack because America's manufacturing base is gone. Those tinkers were factory workers and engineers. We don't have very many of those left because most of their jobs are in China now.
That left cell phones and not much else for Radio Shack to sell, and the margins on those finally got too tight to support them...
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most of the studies he cited are highly suspect. I think Google over reacted firing him (they're terrified of losing women engineers since it's a large, untapped labor pool) but I don't think that makes his arguments sound. Also, having worked in IT for 20 years the "locker room" talk gets pretty bad. I could see most ladies not wanting to be anywhere near that. Google's trying to reign that in. That said, they're doing it the wrong way, and I'm fairly certain that California law is such they'll lose the upcoming lawsuit (though almost ironically I'm pretty sure federal law wouldn't be enough to protect Damore, so it's those libby libs that will more than likely make his suit fly).
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worst case he pitches a few million to Demore and his lawyer. Pichai is after bigger fish, to wit: the largely untapped labor pool of female software engineers. There's a dirty joke in there somewhere, but my consideration of it is one of the reasons that labor pool remains untapped.
Now, a better organization could have it's cake an eat it too. e.g. they could keep guys like Damore without driving out women. But I've been in IT for 20 years and I know what a boys club it is. Changing that is _hard_.
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When you want to know who _really_ has power over you look to those who don't even notice when you criticize them. The ones that get made at criticism are at least aware of you enough to retaliate.
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It's funny how often people say "that's racist" or "that's sexist" but don't actually even try to refute whether or not the statement is true.
Then again, most people probably think that Hume's fork is something you'd use to eat a salad.
Exactly how does this relate to his product performance at Google?
I work with a lot of people that say interesting things in memos, but our organization doesn't fire them. (You know....you might have heard about that thing called a constitution...or whatever...)
You might get a trip to human resources if you threaten people. But stating your views on gender issues or professional issues is not a firable offence.
The best thing that could happen here is to break google up into about 100 companies, maybe seize the boards/CEO's assets.
Put those assets to work in seed startups on power, energy, food, transportation and of course computing and bring back the free market.
All of this money thats being locked up and hid offshore by these CEO's and boards is a waste of human potential really.
We of course have laws that recognize this, but they are not being enforced.
So then next thing after we break up google is to start looking at the judges, political class that broke those laws by not enforcing them.
(Democrat, Republican or otherwise.)
Strip them of their US citizenship. Then let the immigration ICE people handle it. :-)
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Does nobody else find it humorous that some people think that to have an "inclusive environment" you must exclude those of people whom you don't like?
It's doesn't mean google will do no evil, it's a command to other people.
If he were to show any remorse, they would attack him.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
and a big part of why is because it's nerdy men's work. She's on her way to becoming an oncology nurse.
And my point is Pichai doesn't care how he gets his workers. But if he can poach ones that otherwise would have entered the medical field he'd be happy to. My kid's smart, and she's never going to work for Google or any other tech company. And her perception of IT work is a big part of that. Not that I would have encouraged it though. Way too much wage suppression and outsourcing. If Pichai and his ilk don't think I see what he's doing he's nuts.
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he regrets that people realized it was a politically motivated event. ---------------- FTFY
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Be sure to read all the modded up posts on this thread twice.
Are you sure you want to be associated with this site, filled with James Damores?
So does this phrasing sound familiar?
"I'm not political about this but...."
I never regretted firing anyone. In fact I always found the process highly rewarding. Firing people is more fun than hiring them - the only thing that makes hirig someone even remotely rewarding is the prospect of firing them. I mean, ever looked at them in the face as you tell them their source of income just disappeared? That trapped animal look when security appears behind their backs? That incredulous, dejected look when they walk to the door with all their belongings in a cardboard box? I never get tired of it. I think sometimes their family should be present. Imagine it.
Under California law, it is explicitly illegal to fire someone for his political opinions, but perfectly legal to fire someone to avoid creating a hostile work environment (indeed, if no lesser measures suffice to prevent/cure a hostile work environment, it's effectively obligatory).
Therefore, whatever the actual motive for the firing, Google is going to say it was about a hostile work environment, not political opinions. There's a pending lawsuit, after all.
This guy is an upper class Tamil Brahmin - practically the equivalent of a "straight white male."
They discriminated against "lower classes" for thousands of years.
They're as clannish as they come. Nepotism is their middle name.
The irony of this is delicious.
Street shitters and kikes.
Hey precious snowflake, I see you're so deeply offended with the term "snowflake" that you decided to try to dilute its meaning by using it against your opponents on Slashdot in contexts where it doesn't apply. Well, just so you know: it doesn't work and looks pathetic. Just as you are.
This guy should stick to writing code. His first mistake was writing some anti-women propaganda speech. His second mistake was publishing it. His third mistake was promoting it publicly as if he was representing Google. Come on. People have been fired for much less. He should stick to writing code and shut up. He will probably have a hard time finding a job because of his big mouth.
I thought "do no evil" was supposed to be aspirational statement. It seems that Google is taking it as an assertion as in "We here at Google are not capable of doing evil." Such hubris will, of course, mean turning a blind eye to all the evil Google is doing.
Anyhow, mental note to self: Be very, very wary of anyone or anything that claims that their utmost principle is not doing evil.
Just read half of the lawsuit.
If I were Danmore lawyers, I'd be licking my chops for when discovery begins. They're going to be able to dig up sooooo much e-dirt. Just by looking for "googley values."
If I were Google's lawyers, if be afraid, and start thinking about how I can try to swing the 'since data is sharded , it's not within jurisdiction' defense. I'm not a lawyer, but I can't see that working.
I really don't see why Google is the bad guy in this one. From a purely corporate standpoint, I'm sure the lawyers just told HR to get rid of him immediately -- considering the fact that hw was radioactive both internally and externally at that point. Plus, making the CEO come back from vacation is a pretty good way to ensure _someone_ gets fired, if not a whole swath of people.
Everyone on this thread is piling on people, calling them snowflakes or PC. If the choice is to have a civil society where obvious jerks are excluded from conversations, then I prefer PC. Going the other way, especially with the social media echo chamber, is going to lead to millions of loud-mouth, zero-filter Trump clones running around. Seriously, by Kindergarten most kids understand that they're not going to get far by being a bully, unless they happen to be the toughest bully on the playground. I read Damore's memo, and what I got from it is that he's criticizing Google's attempts at diversity because women wouldn't want to work there because they're biologically different. What's wrong with a little outreach when your employees are basically the entire Stanford CS department? Even diversity of thought would be a good thing.
I already changed my search engine to Bing. And there is yandex, too.
Boycott these commies!
We can boycott these commies. Yandex as a replacement!
Even though gang rape and murder are an epidemic in India and Africa, when a white person points out it's the result of low IQ and poor impulse control it's 'racist' cue the flashing lights and career ending media.
The knee jerk social 'justice' warriors are the ones enabling rapists.
Maybe just me, but the issues, and comments in the lawsuit come from SRE managers. I'm not intending to troll, any thoughts on why that might be?
Also, I'm not a lawyer, but this seems destined for court, and destined for a win for the plaintiffs. I've worked for a lot of public companies, and the crap I'm reading in the suit and Appendix B would be cause for immediate termination at any of those companies. I'm blown away at the *documented* evidence, which makes the suit possible. Else, it'd be he said she said (oops sorry) and there's be a verbal conversation as what occurred during the actual firing.
The fact that the CEO would comment in a
"... It's important for the women at Google, and all the people at Google, that we want to make a inclusive environment. "
~Less think, more do
1. Sundar Pichai, whose accomplishments include: destroying G+ as a social platform, a successful Chrome browser, Chromebook (which is worse than unsuccessful -- it actually damages other Google brands), betting a company on unworkable concepts (neural nets can be mathematically proved to be unscalable), making Google the 1st company to merit a successful law suit for discriminating against white males.
2. James Damore, who accomplishments include: training in biology and psychology, extreme competence in software development, dedication to Google even after getting fired for not following half-crazed trends instituted after Pichai took over, a memo detailing which methodologies can be adapted to reduce Google's intrusive and harassing policies without decreasing workplace participation of non-harassing employees, dropping out of Harvard PhD program to pursue career at Google, others
If Google wants to grow beyong the flash-in-a-pan cycle, it needs to find its Steve Jobs. And, at least on the surface, Damore fits the bill more than Pichai. Even if it means that he has to find his way back in through a hostile take over after winning the law suit.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It is pretty rich to claim that the memo "embarrassed" the company, especially in the context of the history of corporate scandals -- memos from cigarette company executives ordering cancer studies to be buried, recordings of Enron salesmen talking about the California power supply, and so on. Oh, so a memo from a male engineer *embarrassed* Google? Or rather, it was the coverage of the memo in the press, it was the characterization of the memo, the endless stream of articles shouting about how Damore wrote a memo declaring: "Women aren't good engineers," which is a blatant mischaracterization and a lie, but the lie is what embarrassed Google. But was it even embarrassment, or was it petulant anger from all the pink haired Rust engineer weirdos that threatened to quit or sue? Women are not neurotic! Fire all the white males!
The Google workforce has been engulfed by an identity politics cult and Pichai is neck deep in it.
I'm a woman. I agree with him. He was right and he shouldn't have been fired. Making women "special" just causes resentment by the men and difficulty for the women.
The legal definition is "creates or tends to create a hostile work environment"
SOME of you know employment law
Once Damore posted publicly, no legal option to protect the company from lawsuit but a quick firing
NO other option
Engineering is herd mentality that benefits from ideas from peers with diverse backgrounds.
Teams build and support bigger and better products than any one person could ever do.
Yet, you want to embrace diversity so your products don't miss market opportunities or better ways to do things. One way to do this is to create a safe ecosystem for everyone to throw crazy ideas out. You set the expectation that non-active talkers listen and the team fuse together the best ideas to come up with the next product.
This memo classified individuals into groups with behavior exceptions. The first problem is teams are too small for this (love the quote "sampling size of one is not statistics"). The second problem is the author is not a good writer as I could read the memo multiple ways. The best way is XXX group doesn't get what they deserve because of YYY. The worst way, which is how many will read it, is XXX group doesn't deserve YYY because they are XXX. Read the flawed data analysis in "The Bell Curve". The third problem is the behavioral exceptions of groups in this memo are insulting at best. I define myself, I honestly don't fit any labels.
I am the anti-minority in all ways (white, male, etc...). I'm not worried about "they took our jobs!". I will, however, make accommodations (as necessary) for people who are different than I am, and be tolerant for things I don't understand, because I realize that others view the world differently than I do, and I don't want to miss out on insight i am incapable of seeing.
I want my team to be awesome. Google did the right thing and cut the toxicity out. I read the proposal to "de-emphasize empathy" and I lost all sympathy for this guy. Affinity groups are a good thing. I don't want individuals on my team to feel vulnerable, I want them to feel safe enough to take risks so I can promote them.
I have never worked for google and have zero interest in ever working for Google.
This would have been funny if it wasn't the truth.
The question I'd like to hear Google CEO Sundar Pichai answer is "If you learned today the identity of the person who leaked James Damore's internal message, would you fire him (or her)?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
That frankly sounds like a rather asinine and trollish comment. Such comments drive speculations that Putin's trolls are deluded enough to hack dormant identities on Slashdot.
Let's pretend your reply was sincere or some other positive adjective. Then my reply is that I can't imagine why anyone would use private browser mode. If I wanted to see the non-personalized results, then the google claims to offer that option (though you didn't say anything to suggest you were doing anything to make your search results unbiased in any way). If I wanted something resembling privacy, there's always Tor (if I trust Tor). Higher privacy is available, but the inconvenience increases exponentially.
Of course the thing that really makes it hard to believe in your sincerity is that neither you nor I have ANY basis to think that the person you were originally attacking [Xenographic] was doing anything to prevent the original search results from being personalized. While I confirmed your result on at least one of MY computers, that says nothing about what he can see when he searches.
Upon further consideration, I have to estimate your strike count at 2-1/2.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
There's an unspoken discrimination today, and it's upheld by the federal government through funding for minorities and women. White males. I saw this growing up as I approached the time to go to college. I didn't qualify for a lot of scholarships purely based from 2 points that disqualified me for them. 1. I'm male 2. I'm white If you don't consider that discrimination, you need to read the definition of the word.
The modern "liberal" is not a classical liberal at all; the modern "liberal" is a leftist, and leftists generally arise as narrow little groups of hyper-energetic single-issue activists who are only able to achieve political power by gathering together with other clusters of leftists in coalitions where they must all support each other's demands. They must all stick together on every wacky warped thing or the coalition breaks up and they all lose power. The pussy hat people MUST support illegal aliens, who MUST support trans-bathroom people, who MUST support net neutrality people who MUST support the big government workers' unions who MUST support the Jew-hating Muslim immigrant community, and so-on.
The only works if people are grouped together, and then only treated as groups. All black people are part of a black "community" (group) and all blacks MUST behave as members of that community. Any black who does not is branded as "not really black" and can be ridiculed or ignored. Same for women, Hispanics, Asians, etc. All persons must be in groups and treated as parts of those groups. Individualism is completely contrary to leftism and is actually dangerous to it.
This is how the left ends up demanding hobby lobby is evil because it will not pay for abortions, but denounces republicans for "killing kids" when they do not fund the child care programs the left demands. This is also how the left denounces conservative republicans as evil and hateful for opposing gay marriage, but those same leftists embrace Muslim immigrants who openly say homosexuals should be murdered. The same left that rants about women's rights while embracing Muslims who say women should be covered up head-to-toe, must always be escorted and supervised by men, and not be allowed to drive cars. Their environmentalists demand companies must be punished for each bird killed in an oil spill, but their renewables activists demand that nobody notice the thousands of birds annually fried by solar power facilites or diced by windmills. All these little special interests must be embraced no matter how completely incompatible and even contradictory their ideas are.
I cannot seed how even a wet-behind-the-ears young lawyer would be stupid enough to let Google get dragged through the discovery phase of a trial. This is not like some patent fight, it's gonna be about the corprate culture and all the memos and meetings and internal policies which will eventually become public record. It'll be far better for them to just fire the money cannon to make this go away.
It's also not a good time for Google to play around here and risk being caught hiding things from the courts. There are people in Washington on both sides of the political aisle who are wary of Google and its power and are just itching to take it down a notch or two. There's also an Attourney General whose political base is quite annoyed with him and sees him as impotent.... and THEY just happen to be the sort Google appears to hate and has apparently been working against. What better time for the feds to go after Google for some rather blatant and now well-documented violations of employment laws? If Google tries to hide anything in discovery, an ACTUAL obstruction of justice, they will be just begging for the feds to go after them with enthusiasm.
Again: a quiet settlement is the way for Google to go if they have a competent lawyer.... I guess they could Google for one of those....
Trump is only saying the same thing many Hollywood types have said for years: that it was an error for the courts to declare open-season on "public figures" and allow the press to blatantly lie about them. If you are an average person and a journalists knowingly lies about you, you can sue and demand a correction and collect damages. If you are arbitrarily determined to be a "public figure" (there's no fixed legal standard for this category) then you cannot sue and the press is free to lie.
This is NOT about innocent errors, it's about intentional lies.
The current press corps HATES Trump so much they have run with this protection and lie about the man and his family on a daily basis. I'm with him on this. NO JOURNALIST should be penalized for a clearly-labelled OPINION or for an innocent MISTAKE as lonmg as it's corrected in ann honest and timely fashion, but journalism is engaging in a Trump-era act of self-immolation with the bold and intentional lies, which should be stripped of all legal protections. There is simply no written law, nor any clause in the Constitution, which says journalists may boldly lie about "public figures" with immunity, this was a ruling years ago by a small group of unelected and unaccountable judges, who themselves were not likely to ever be victimized by it.
The guy wrote a MEMO suggesting ways to make the workplace MORE INCLUSIVE by taking into account what some people within his academic field believe to be some inherent characteristics of some of the people who needed to be better included.
Hardly "bullying"
He simply failed to realize that you can no longer say anything about certain groups of snowflakes without lighting the match on an outrage bomb. Modern leftists cannot tolerate any form of thought that does not conform to their highly-political demands.
Any normal person, when confronted with a speaker they disagree with will say something like "gosh, I really think you're wrong about that, let me see if I can persuade you to see it a differwent way...".
THAT is the traditional way we handle "free speech" in America. We accept that words, no matter how wrong we think them, are NOT PHYSICALLY PAINFUL, and that civil debate where NEITHER SIDE yells or screams or stomps its feet is a great thing.
A social justice snowflake will, upon hearing an opinion it disagrees with, wet its panties and then scream for somebody to take away the offending speaker and kill him./her (or at least send him/her to a re-education camp to be taught to parrot the right opinions). As a genral rule, social justice snowflakes freak-out at opinions they don't like in part because it is a signal that somebody failed to prevent the offending speech in the first place before it could even be expressed and thus failed to provide a "safe space".
James Damore was NOT the bully here..... the bully was Sundar Pichai who either is an SJW or who acted as the enabling thug for the SJWs he employs.
He had the media spotlight for a week. His first attack could be to remind people how Google chooses what they read, and how powerful that is. And what it means to have a mono culture run by a CEO that lies.
Then encourage people to use Bing, saying that it is about the same -- he is an expert on search. More importantly, discourage people from clicking on ADs. There are plenty on both sides of politics that are worried about Google, and even a 5% drop in clicks is a huge revenue loss for Google.
Then blame it all on Pichai personally. Put the pressure on.
It would be interesting to hear from people inside Google. I would think that the culture has changed significantly after this event, with people being far less open.