Slashdot Mirror
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
They know they will lose, have budgeted a few million.
The jury should punish them, hard, ghost peppers as lube. Using Odorous' stage gear.
They will likely settle, to control the press. Not get publically caught in lies.
Damore shouldn't settle for less than a public written apology, lots of cash and Google firing the people that made the decision.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
I learned today that Damore had already filed an NLRB complaint before being terminated. Not looking good for Google at all.
"His name was James Damore."
Cite some actual words from the memo that were wrong.
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.
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.
I don't agree. He was naive thinking that any SJW scum actually wanted a rational discussion, but his points are mostly valid, at the very least as the starting point for an actually rational discussion.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.
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"
Especially since you can just pay them 77 cents to the dollar. They should be aiming to have all female workers.
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?
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.
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!
Nice assertion, now list the reasons why.
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.
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.)
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.
... 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
Except that is entirely the problem that Damore calls out. They arent culturing anything productive. They are stifling certain things simply because they dont want to offend a very small but extremely loud (possibly interpreted as bitchy) group of people. The reactions from that certain group since the leak on seem to further doubledown his points and considerations.
Because his feedback wasn't required to be in APA format. If the Google/SJW response would have been along the lines of, "Hmm. Interesting arguments, let's develop these thoughts some more. What does the literature say?" then you'd have an argument. Instead, the double-plus-ungood-wrongthink was met with "Rabble! Rabble! Rabble!" and pitchforks.
Most of the time that's called "we don't comment on ongoing litigation".
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Well, the personal upside to Pichai is that he gets fired before his actions fully sink the unsinkable company. And then he gets to sue claiming that he was fired for protecting workers rights. Consider the alternative -- he doesn't comment and stays on and sinks with the ship.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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_.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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?
He didn't use capable at all. That word isn't in his entire memo; you may need to read it as there is distressingly little accurate reporting of its contents anywhere on major news sites.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
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 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.
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.
"... 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.
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.
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.