>That said, it was the safe path, but legally much more rapid action could have been taken in some cases had we wanted to take that path.
The company I work for has a few things that result in immediate termination and an established track record of terminating people in those instances. Everything else...not so much, so there is an elaborate process that must be fired (conversely, laying someone off is easy, go figure). Even in the case of a white male, if you deviate from policy, you open yourself up to discrimination claims.
I think Google opened themselves up to a legit liability risk here. Doesn't mean they will lose, because they have deep pockets. But a public lawsuit will be messy, and Google has no good path here (alienate one half or the other of the political divide). My guess is they will try to settle out of court. It's possible, of course, that Damore was counting on getting fired, either for a settlement payday, or - worse from Google's perspective - to shine a harsh light on Google's internal culture, and so Damore may not be interested in settling for a reasonable amount. In that case, the "good will" damage to Google's brand could end up being pretty significant. They don't care right now because the criticism is coming from the right and it's clear they don't care about the opinions that are right of center (Damore's thesis, not ironically), but if they start losing users and paying customers, then they will start to care. A lot of Google's dominance is built on products where there are satisfactory alternatives.
For email, I abandoned free mail and went and registered a domain name and set up Amazon WorkMail.
For search engine, I'm going with Bing.
For browser, I'll probably go with Opera or Mozilla. Mozilla got clunky and had some stability issues on my computer which is why I abandoned it, but it might be better now. Evaluating Opera at the moment (as I type this on Chrome:p).
>That may very well be true, however the law doesn't protect every venue of distribution of one's beliefs. It may not be an acceptable venue for such a discussion to use the business network. Throwing out accusations, or even implications, isn't protected when you've totally bypassed the appropriate channels. It can be disruptive. I have no opinion one way or other, I am just presenting a side that some seem to assume doesn't matter.
Of course it matters.
I'm a manager of a medium sized team (35 people) in a fairly large corporation (>$15 bn revenue), in a right to work state. It's basically impossible to fire someone unless they commit an egregious offense (like having sex in the office or actual physical violence). Even a white male. As in, a white male on my team might have an issue with alcohol dependency and coming to work intoxicated, and because of our internal policies I cannot fire him for said problem. If I did, it would open up my company to liability issues because of their past policies and dealings with that issue. Does it mean we'd lose the lawsuit? No. But...
Guess what most corporations don't want to have happen?
Discovery. As in, discovery motions on all blog postings on Google's internal message board, discovery motions on all disciplinary actions taken...or not taken...for writings that could be construed as contentious. Discovery on any management emails on what to do about Damore after the incident. Discovery on internal HR policies governing - or not - what Damore was fired for. Discovery on whether or not Google had previously allowed and encouraged controversial writings in the past on similar topics and not retaliated against employees that had posted.
>Lol, I pretty much tune out as soon as someone puts "SJW" in their post
Then it's your loss, because it's short hand for exactly the type of people on the left that cry for sacrificial heads any time they feel their sacrosanct dogma is violated. And the funny thing is, a lot of their sacrifices are people who are left of center.
>Queue another white male complaining he can't get ahead because of discrimination, and not the host of other reasons why he is unsuitable for working with others (see Google v Damore).
Based on that, I'm going to conclude you didn't actually read what he wrote, you probably read the meta conclusion from another person who also didn't read the posting and simply went to straight to "he's a bigot, fire him" action part of your OODA loop.
>The employee is not being fired for his opinion, or at least that would be very hard to proven.
Actually, it will be very easy to prove that he was fired directly for discussing work conditions, which is protected activity in California. Google's VP of HR and the CEO of Google all but confirmed that what he wrote was unacceptable and that he was terminated because of it.
>However, in this particular case, the person was a fellow conservative
There is no indication that Damone is a conservative...unless you think that arguing against discriminating against conservatives automatically makes one a conservative (just like arguing against discriminating against gays automatically makes you gay...).
>The employee is not being fired for his opinion, or at least that would be very hard to proven.
Actually, it will be very easy to prove that he was fired directly for discussing work conditions, which is protected activity in California. Google's VP of HR and the CEO of Google all but confirmed that what he wrote was unacceptable and that he was terminated because of it.
Doesn't have to be protected. All a lawyer has to do is prove to a jury that Google violated it's own policies and standards with a termination. Bonus points for any reputational damage and retaliation Damone might have suffered as a result. Even in right to work states where you can nominally be fired for any reason, your HR policies can create effectively a mutually binding contract. Also, if the policy itself was not uniformly and fairly applied, then Google opens itself up. For example, if someone wrote a SJW screed similar to this attacking white male privilege at Google and was not similarly disciplined, then Google has a problem, especially if there is a pattern of this behavior and it can be proven (as suggested by Damone's post).
Translation "I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome".
Women make up 18% of college CS students. Even if there are zero statistically meaningful sex differences affecting performance between men and women, there will still be about as many men who are 1+ standard deviations better than he median than women CS engineers in total. That means if I am building a team (or a company) out of really good engineers, it will be much easier to find good male engineers than women engineers, even without sex differences. Google can't go back in time and affect 1996 to 2017 CS enrollment rates for women.
Incidentally, this disparity in enrollment and graduation rates is one of the reasons why a lot of companies are pursuing women from non-traditional majors to fill technical roles and help correct sex ratios.
Full disclosure: I'm a white male that manages several tech teams and am actively engaged in hiring women and minority candidates. That doesn't mean I think people should be destroyed for violating SJW bullshit dogma - or just about anything else. What Damone wrote did not create a hostile work environment unless you are an overly sensitive twit (and I wouldn't want those people on my team in any event). He wasn't regurgitating Mein Kampf. This is SJWs, like always, creating a mountain out of a molehill because of feels.
Not only that, the EEOC will often take up a minority discrimination case, so you have a company defending itself against the deep pockets of the Federal Government.
>Actually because he is a White make people actually care about this.
People care about this because he was right. Not necessarily about the sex differences (although what he said was supported by scientific citations), but about the punitive political correct echo chamber that Google had built up that suppressed and punished deviations from the SJW/PC dogma.
And sure enough, right after he wrote that blog post, the calls to burn the witch started, and Google dutifully genuflected at the SJW altar and gave up Damone as the proper sacrifice.
>Your kind have made this very same claim in every election since 1960....and NEVER been able to prove jack.
We've never been able to "prove jack" because there has never been a credible fucking investigation. Democrats kill in the cradle any attempt to shine any sort of light or put any limits on potential vote and election fraud.
>Sure man, and the Republican Governors, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General, Legislators and Elections Clerks have completely missed it.
There has never been any serious investigation into the degree of fraud and illegal voting occurring. And winners seldom have an incentive to analyze the incidence of fraud in recent elections.
However, Democrats have opposed, at every turn, any real attempt to investigate, or put in voting requirements that would in any way limit the occurrence of fraud (e.g.,killing off Voter ID acts in court), and have pushed forward bills that would facilitate it (e.g., Motor Voter Act). The reality is we don't know how bad it is. But it's almost certainly way higher than the Democratic estimates of near zero.
That's the great thing about an investigation - it will actually shine some light on the problem - or lack of a problem, as the case may be.
>No, I don't mean that at all. Were charges laid, or has the right wing echo chamber forgotten that part, too?
Charges were laid, and the suspect plead guilty.
Remind me again though, how many people were injured? If James Alefantis was "almost killed", surely he must have been shot, right? Shots fired in his general direction?
It's a little more complicated than average ability. The tail, particular the right side of the tail of the distribution, is really important to firms like Google who want to hire the best and the brightest.
Women today, in the US, make up around 18% of computer science graduates. Literally, the only way you will get a 50:50 sex ratio of men to women in computer programming roles is if you lower relative standards for women or pay them dramatically over their sex-neutral market value. Because of the difference in pool sizes, there will almost be more men at 1+ standard deviation better than the norm than all women CS grads.
Which dubious claims? Dubious because you don't like them?
Like it...or not...he sourced his "claims" with actual scientific literature.
>women are not biologically fit to be engineers then covers his ass with "oh but some overlap". Give me a break.
Give you a break for what? Obviously not reading what Damone wrote? Because he categorically did not state that women are "biologically fit" to be engineers. His claim is that the distribution groups for people willing and able to be good engineers is not the same for men as for women, and so Google going on a crusade for perfect 50:50 sex ratios for staffing engineers is probably doomed to failure or will result in a lowering of standards of the wider pool, and for women in particular.
>Well, it must be said that the pedophile in the pizza shop story just about got the owner of the place killed.
You mean the stunt where the guy that was an actor (as in really, his "profession was actor) supposedly fired a shot into the air? Where no one was actually shot *at* or injured?
Take out California, and Hillary lost the popular election too.
Republican vote is suppressed in California in national elections because there is no point.
In any event, Trump won the votes that mattered. Funny how, prior to the election - when it was thought that Trump might lose the Electoral College but "win" the popular vote, Democrats were all about respecting the outcome, but when the opposite happened, they think it suddenly de-legitimizes Trump.
It will be *really* interesting to see what the Voting Commission turns up. A lot of people think there has been a dramatic and intentional under counting of the numbers of foreign nationals illegally voting in Presidential elections.
>But from what I've seen, were talking numbers of 1 tomahawk missle per year total, ie chicken feed.
A tomahawk cruise missile runs about $1 million per.
Sex re-assignment runs anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000.
There are estimates of 2500 to 5000 transgender identifying individuals in the military.
If everyone of them opted to go for sex-reassignment surgery, you are looking at a total cost ranging from $37,500,000 to $250,000,000. Or the procurement cost of 37 to 250 Tomahawk cruise missiles. All to coddle a population group of insufficient size to round out a brigade.
Seems like the trans SJW crowd pushed their luck too far on this one by trying to get Uncle Sam and the US taxpayer to pay for their surgeries.
>(This topic is further complicated because there are clearly societal problems in US Culture which serve to isolate and trans persons, and those situations increase depression, suicidal impulses, and underlying mental traumas that are often co-indicated in trans people).
All cultures have issues accepting people/habits that are 4 sigmas outside the median. Trans people aren't really doing themselves any favors by insisting that "cis-" people are "phobic" because they don't want to have intimate relationships with "trans" people.
>(This topic is further complicated because there are clearly societal problems in US Culture which serve to isolate and trans persons, and those situations increase depression, suicidal impulses, and underlying mental traumas that are often co-indicated in trans people).
All cultures have issues accepting people/habits that are 4 sigmas outside the median.
Trans people aren't really doing themselves any favors by insisting that "cis-" people are "phobic" because they don't want to have intimate relationships with "trans" people.
>In as universe where your opinion on this supersedes any medical authority, sure.
And of course politics has absolutely nothing to do with that changing medical opinion. Not at all!
Now, tell those same doctors you think you are a unicorn deep down inside and want a horn on your forehead and they'll classify you as delusional. Tell them you want your penis chopped off and your scrotum tucked back into a fake vagina, and suddenly you are a prime candidate for enlistment in the Marines (according to some here).
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, downloaded!
>That said, it was the safe path, but legally much more rapid action could have been taken in some cases had we wanted to take that path.
The company I work for has a few things that result in immediate termination and an established track record of terminating people in those instances. Everything else...not so much, so there is an elaborate process that must be fired (conversely, laying someone off is easy, go figure). Even in the case of a white male, if you deviate from policy, you open yourself up to discrimination claims.
I think Google opened themselves up to a legit liability risk here. Doesn't mean they will lose, because they have deep pockets. But a public lawsuit will be messy, and Google has no good path here (alienate one half or the other of the political divide). My guess is they will try to settle out of court. It's possible, of course, that Damore was counting on getting fired, either for a settlement payday, or - worse from Google's perspective - to shine a harsh light on Google's internal culture, and so Damore may not be interested in settling for a reasonable amount. In that case, the "good will" damage to Google's brand could end up being pretty significant. They don't care right now because the criticism is coming from the right and it's clear they don't care about the opinions that are right of center (Damore's thesis, not ironically), but if they start losing users and paying customers, then they will start to care. A lot of Google's dominance is built on products where there are satisfactory alternatives.
>What did you change to?
:p).
For email, I abandoned free mail and went and registered a domain name and set up Amazon WorkMail.
For search engine, I'm going with Bing.
For browser, I'll probably go with Opera or Mozilla. Mozilla got clunky and had some stability issues on my computer which is why I abandoned it, but it might be better now. Evaluating Opera at the moment (as I type this on Chrome
But I'm abandoing Google. Search engine changed. Primary email, changed. Browser, about to be changed.
>That may very well be true, however the law doesn't protect every venue of distribution of one's beliefs. It may not be an acceptable venue for such a discussion to use the business network. Throwing out accusations, or even implications, isn't protected when you've totally bypassed the appropriate channels. It can be disruptive. I have no opinion one way or other, I am just presenting a side that some seem to assume doesn't matter.
...or not taken...for writings that could be construed as contentious. Discovery on any management emails on what to do about Damore after the incident. Discovery on internal HR policies governing - or not - what Damore was fired for. Discovery on whether or not Google had previously allowed and encouraged controversial writings in the past on similar topics and not retaliated against employees that had posted.
Of course it matters.
I'm a manager of a medium sized team (35 people) in a fairly large corporation (>$15 bn revenue), in a right to work state. It's basically impossible to fire someone unless they commit an egregious offense (like having sex in the office or actual physical violence). Even a white male. As in, a white male on my team might have an issue with alcohol dependency and coming to work intoxicated, and because of our internal policies I cannot fire him for said problem. If I did, it would open up my company to liability issues because of their past policies and dealings with that issue. Does it mean we'd lose the lawsuit? No. But...
Guess what most corporations don't want to have happen?
Discovery. As in, discovery motions on all blog postings on Google's internal message board, discovery motions on all disciplinary actions taken
>Lol, I pretty much tune out as soon as someone puts "SJW" in their post
Then it's your loss, because it's short hand for exactly the type of people on the left that cry for sacrificial heads any time they feel their sacrosanct dogma is violated. And the funny thing is, a lot of their sacrifices are people who are left of center.
>Queue another white male complaining he can't get ahead because of discrimination, and not the host of other reasons why he is unsuitable for working with others (see Google v Damore).
Based on that, I'm going to conclude you didn't actually read what he wrote, you probably read the meta conclusion from another person who also didn't read the posting and simply went to straight to "he's a bigot, fire him" action part of your OODA loop.
>But didn't he also argue that an entire group of his coworkers had inherently less potential than other groups simply based on their gender?
Where did he argue that?
Here is his actual post: https://www.documentcloud.org/...
Feel free to where he argued that women have less potential than men.
Edit to fix formatting.
>The employee is not being fired for his opinion, or at least that would be very hard to proven.
Actually, it will be very easy to prove that he was fired directly for discussing work conditions, which is protected activity in California. Google's VP of HR and the CEO of Google all but confirmed that what he wrote was unacceptable and that he was terminated because of it.
>However, in this particular case, the person was a fellow conservative
There is no indication that Damone is a conservative...unless you think that arguing against discriminating against conservatives automatically makes one a conservative (just like arguing against discriminating against gays automatically makes you gay...).
>The employee is not being fired for his opinion, or at least that would be very hard to proven. Actually, it will be very easy to prove that he was fired directly for discussing work conditions, which is protected activity in California. Google's VP of HR and the CEO of Google all but confirmed that what he wrote was unacceptable and that he was terminated because of it.
>But are those "protected"? Apparently not.
Doesn't have to be protected. All a lawyer has to do is prove to a jury that Google violated it's own policies and standards with a termination. Bonus points for any reputational damage and retaliation Damone might have suffered as a result. Even in right to work states where you can nominally be fired for any reason, your HR policies can create effectively a mutually binding contract. Also, if the policy itself was not uniformly and fairly applied, then Google opens itself up. For example, if someone wrote a SJW screed similar to this attacking white male privilege at Google and was not similarly disciplined, then Google has a problem, especially if there is a pattern of this behavior and it can be proven (as suggested by Damone's post).
>*disclosure: I am a white male in a tech job
Translation "I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome".
Women make up 18% of college CS students. Even if there are zero statistically meaningful sex differences affecting performance between men and women, there will still be about as many men who are 1+ standard deviations better than he median than women CS engineers in total. That means if I am building a team (or a company) out of really good engineers, it will be much easier to find good male engineers than women engineers, even without sex differences. Google can't go back in time and affect 1996 to 2017 CS enrollment rates for women.
Incidentally, this disparity in enrollment and graduation rates is one of the reasons why a lot of companies are pursuing women from non-traditional majors to fill technical roles and help correct sex ratios.
Full disclosure: I'm a white male that manages several tech teams and am actively engaged in hiring women and minority candidates. That doesn't mean I think people should be destroyed for violating SJW bullshit dogma - or just about anything else. What Damone wrote did not create a hostile work environment unless you are an overly sensitive twit (and I wouldn't want those people on my team in any event). He wasn't regurgitating Mein Kampf. This is SJWs, like always, creating a mountain out of a molehill because of feels.
Not only that, the EEOC will often take up a minority discrimination case, so you have a company defending itself against the deep pockets of the Federal Government.
>Actually because he is a White make people actually care about this.
People care about this because he was right. Not necessarily about the sex differences (although what he said was supported by scientific citations), but about the punitive political correct echo chamber that Google had built up that suppressed and punished deviations from the SJW/PC dogma.
And sure enough, right after he wrote that blog post, the calls to burn the witch started, and Google dutifully genuflected at the SJW altar and gave up Damone as the proper sacrifice.
>Your kind have made this very same claim in every election since 1960....and NEVER been able to prove jack.
We've never been able to "prove jack" because there has never been a credible fucking investigation. Democrats kill in the cradle any attempt to shine any sort of light or put any limits on potential vote and election fraud.
>Sure man, and the Republican Governors, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General, Legislators and Elections Clerks have completely missed it.
There has never been any serious investigation into the degree of fraud and illegal voting occurring. And winners seldom have an incentive to analyze the incidence of fraud in recent elections.
However, Democrats have opposed, at every turn, any real attempt to investigate, or put in voting requirements that would in any way limit the occurrence of fraud (e.g.,killing off Voter ID acts in court), and have pushed forward bills that would facilitate it (e.g., Motor Voter Act). The reality is we don't know how bad it is. But it's almost certainly way higher than the Democratic estimates of near zero.
That's the great thing about an investigation - it will actually shine some light on the problem - or lack of a problem, as the case may be.
>No, I don't mean that at all. Were charges laid, or has the right wing echo chamber forgotten that part, too?
Charges were laid, and the suspect plead guilty.
Remind me again though, how many people were injured? If James Alefantis was "almost killed", surely he must have been shot, right? Shots fired in his general direction?
It's a little more complicated than average ability. The tail, particular the right side of the tail of the distribution, is really important to firms like Google who want to hire the best and the brightest.
Women today, in the US, make up around 18% of computer science graduates. Literally, the only way you will get a 50:50 sex ratio of men to women in computer programming roles is if you lower relative standards for women or pay them dramatically over their sex-neutral market value. Because of the difference in pool sizes, there will almost be more men at 1+ standard deviation better than the norm than all women CS grads.
>using dubious claims.
Which dubious claims? Dubious because you don't like them?
Like it...or not...he sourced his "claims" with actual scientific literature.
>women are not biologically fit to be engineers then covers his ass with "oh but some overlap". Give me a break.
Give you a break for what? Obviously not reading what Damone wrote? Because he categorically did not state that women are "biologically fit" to be engineers. His claim is that the distribution groups for people willing and able to be good engineers is not the same for men as for women, and so Google going on a crusade for perfect 50:50 sex ratios for staffing engineers is probably doomed to failure or will result in a lowering of standards of the wider pool, and for women in particular.
>Now I'm not about to go full blown alt-left here
Too late, you already did.
>Well, it must be said that the pedophile in the pizza shop story just about got the owner of the place killed. You mean the stunt where the guy that was an actor (as in really, his "profession was actor) supposedly fired a shot into the air? Where no one was actually shot *at* or injured?
Take out California, and Hillary lost the popular election too.
Republican vote is suppressed in California in national elections because there is no point.
In any event, Trump won the votes that mattered. Funny how, prior to the election - when it was thought that Trump might lose the Electoral College but "win" the popular vote, Democrats were all about respecting the outcome, but when the opposite happened, they think it suddenly de-legitimizes Trump.
It will be *really* interesting to see what the Voting Commission turns up. A lot of people think there has been a dramatic and intentional under counting of the numbers of foreign nationals illegally voting in Presidential elections.
>But from what I've seen, were talking numbers of 1 tomahawk missle per year total, ie chicken feed.
A tomahawk cruise missile runs about $1 million per.
Sex re-assignment runs anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000.
There are estimates of 2500 to 5000 transgender identifying individuals in the military.
If everyone of them opted to go for sex-reassignment surgery, you are looking at a total cost ranging from $37,500,000 to $250,000,000. Or the procurement cost of 37 to 250 Tomahawk cruise missiles. All to coddle a population group of insufficient size to round out a brigade.
Seems like the trans SJW crowd pushed their luck too far on this one by trying to get Uncle Sam and the US taxpayer to pay for their surgeries.
>(This topic is further complicated because there are clearly societal problems in US Culture which serve to isolate and trans persons, and those situations increase depression, suicidal impulses, and underlying mental traumas that are often co-indicated in trans people).
All cultures have issues accepting people/habits that are 4 sigmas outside the median. Trans people aren't really doing themselves any favors by insisting that "cis-" people are "phobic" because they don't want to have intimate relationships with "trans" people.
>(This topic is further complicated because there are clearly societal problems in US Culture which serve to isolate and trans persons, and those situations increase depression, suicidal impulses, and underlying mental traumas that are often co-indicated in trans people). All cultures have issues accepting people/habits that are 4 sigmas outside the median. Trans people aren't really doing themselves any favors by insisting that "cis-" people are "phobic" because they don't want to have intimate relationships with "trans" people.
>In as universe where your opinion on this supersedes any medical authority, sure.
And of course politics has absolutely nothing to do with that changing medical opinion. Not at all!
Now, tell those same doctors you think you are a unicorn deep down inside and want a horn on your forehead and they'll classify you as delusional. Tell them you want your penis chopped off and your scrotum tucked back into a fake vagina, and suddenly you are a prime candidate for enlistment in the Marines (according to some here).