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Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

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201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#201
Damore is planning to sue under the National Labor Relations Act or California's tough law against restricting political activity. The legal experts seem to think he might have a weak to a decent case. I would think Google would try to settle anyway, in order to prevent discovery and the release of their internal communications about the memo and their internal data about the performance of different groups on job interviews.

Is there anything that would prevent another Google (or Facebook, etc.) employee (with a lower salary or thinking Google is not for him anyway) from going completely by the letter of the law and suing when fired? That employee could make a more limited case that Google's diversity programs discriminate against white or Asian men in hiring, complain about diversity training sessions, say something about agreeing with Trump's policies and with the conservatives (to make it more explicitly about political activity), write about organizing other employees who agree, make sure to file an NLRB complaint before getting fired, bring up some IQ meta-analysis studies to make sure it's scientific, yet controversial enough to get him fired, state that he's happy to work with Googlers of all sexes and races and that he holds their skills in high esteem and hopes everybody else does too (to make a firing based on the employee manual less credible), use email (because that's what's specifically in the law), run it all through a lawyer first, and don't do any post-firing interviews as Damore has done.

Wouldn't that cause huge headaches for Google and other tech companies? If such emails get leaked, the bad PR would force Google's hand to fire him, as happened with Damore. It seems like companies that want to see themselves portrayed as socially progressive might end up between a rock and a hard place.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#202

From the article: > Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. That, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and probably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his "dialectical skills." That's the very definition o…

But Google was and is a debate club - there is extensive information about Google's multiple discussion boards and lively cluture of dialectics. Why do you object/punish a single discussion that you happen to disagree with?

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been writ…

> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on w…

So basically its ok to discrimate against Men because Women are 'opressed'. Thats not an acceptable argument imo.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#204
post #26
post #6

I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm. He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I t…

Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article- > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? Th…

> The document still did harm.

Do you think she was unaware of Googles strong push for women in the workplace?

That seems unlikely.

Do you think she was previously unaware that many people might think diversity hires are less qualified?

That seems unlikely.

Did the memo guy state that diversity hires are lowering the bar? No. He went out of his way to say the opposite.

The most likely scenario is she has felt this way since she was hired and now has a specific person she can direct her anger/frustration/hurt onto.

> and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day.

This is demonstrably false. Imposter syndrome is quite common for men in tech.

I would be interested to see studies on imposter syndrome between genders and between fields.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#205
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way. Basically, in any other context we expect people who have vastly differing views to be able to put them aside and work together. The only exception to this rule seems to be around leftist issues, where if you disagree you are out…

> The thoughts of one twenty-something engineer posted to an internal message board (for these kinds of discussions I might add) does not create a hostile workplace or harm Google in any way. Considering how all sixteen of my female teammates were pissed off about it, I'm going to go ahead and say you are demonstrably wrong.

How many of them read the memo, as opposed to misleading characterizations of it ("Women can't do engineering", "misogynist", etc)?

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#206
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harm would have been done even if the memo was not leaked, due to the otherwise discussed effects on google employees.

Again, only if you believe a line was crossed, or whether he wrote a well-intentioned memo with the goal of supporting and increasing diversity that had some dubious conclusions based on controversial research. He is also young and just starting his career. If this had been addressed calmly maybe he could have learned from this situation. Zero tolerance for a young man's folly instead turned him into a sympathetic fi…

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Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#207

I think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an employer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will and relationships can end over personal differences. One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their gen…

As I understand it he was raising on an internal issue that was generally accepted as open for discussion (hiring and quotas). I think likening it to "mailing a manifesto out" is a deliberate mischaracterization.

This article is the first I've seen on this memo and by the spread of it inside and outside the company that's what it appeared to be. I'm not trying to mischaracterize the issue. In fact, I don't have all of the information.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#208
post #119

>> political correctness makes it hard for people with unpopular opinions to ask questions and discuss their viewpoints... non_PC != unpopular

I'm going to disagree with you there. 'PC' ideas and speech are those that are popular enough to be said in the company of a diverse crowd. This doesn't mean that they have to be bland or inoffensive to absolutely everyone; just popular enough that any dissenters will be a small minority and pressured against speaking up in fear of social punishment.

PC and popular are not at all the same. A vocal minority gets to define PC, and that minority happens to be on the left.

If the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say "Talking about baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if it is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment"

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on w…

The burden of responding to something that is (at the very least presented as) evidence? I don't think it's possible to have a discussion if you don't expect and allow pro-affirmative-action stakeholders to respond with their own evidence and reasoning, in turn.

He could have brought up his concerns to hiring authorities in the company, whose job it is to refute diversity myths. Not expect people who have had this burden placed on them for their entire adult life to do it yet again.
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