James Damore and three others end Google suit • Hacker News Board

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#291

Post by free_rms » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

dirtydroog wrote: post #289

uxcolumbo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Joe Rogan is alt right? Watching his interviews with various people who are more left leaning doesn't give me the impression that he is alt-right.

Rogan was labelled alt-right after he interviewed Gavin McInness and Alex Jones again (a comical interview btw). That may have been cancelled out by him interviewing Bernie Sanders though.

Rogan is aesthetically a bro, that's all this comes down to.

If he were more 'soy' and less 'bro', while having the same mostly-liberal opinions, he'd get an entirely different reaction from the elite cultural left.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#292

Post by sacks2k » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #184

Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess. As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

He never released anything to the public. Someone who didn't like his political views leaked it to Twitter and the press.

If I were him, I would have personally sued the person that leaked the content and continued the fight until they had no money left. They really need to be taught a lesson that it's not okay to do something like this with the intention of destroying a person's life.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#293

Post by pinkfoot » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #281

pinkfoot wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things that are designed for everyone should have a diverse set of eyes on them. Teaching, especially pre-school teaching, is going to be tough to make attractive for men. And for a lot of parents too.

I agree, this needs to be fixed also. But teaching isn't my industry. One of the teachers I most learned from was male, he actually sparked my interest in computers because he ran an after school computer club for 20 pence.. which for a poor household such as mine was affordable..

Wait until we try insist on parents hiring male au pairs for their daughters. Especially if they are bald, short, and plump.

Then you will see gender bias. :)

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#294

Post by pydry » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

pinkfoot wrote: post #253

door99 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women! The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?

> The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise. We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.

* Intellectual posturing and oneupsmanship in software teams. Participating in intellectual dick waving.

* A strong focus on being "right" over working collaboratively (especially in domains with no right answers).

* Hyper competitiveness - to the detriment of effectiveness.

* A lack of empathy (e.g. PRs with "your code sucks, suck it up and stop being such a baby").

These things are hardly good from the perspective of any software developer (except particular kinds of men who thrive under these conditions) but they're particularly off putting to women.

I tend to find that this aggressive behavior is most frequently exhibited by "senior" developers who aren't actually very good or clever but have built up a reputation that they wish to protect. Some developers are very territorial.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#295

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

cassalian wrote: post #249

mabbo wrote: post #184

Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess. As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

> Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. I agree with you; however Damore is only partly to blame... IMO the leaker of the memo is just as responsible for the PR mess as Damore is for writing the memo in the first place (no leak = no PR mess) (no memo = no PR mess) (memo + no leak = no PR mess).

It was already a huge mess internally even before it got leaked. Internal relations matter a lot too.

I think he would have gotten fired even without the leak.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#296

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

spangry wrote: post #238

mabbo wrote: post #184

Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess. As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

If making a mess is what gets you fired, shouldn't google have gone after whoever leaked the memo, instead of Damore?

Por que no los dos? Google has fired leakers too.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#297

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #184

Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess. As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

If your CEO hires women who you think are biologically inferior to you because of their gender, you'd better start polishing up your resume before they learn your name.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#298

Post by yeetman21 » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

magic5227 wrote: post #77

daenz wrote: post #16

I remember at a previous job, a female engineer talking to other engineers when the Damore story broke. She said "I can't believe he said that women can't be good engineers" and indicated he deserved to be fired. As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. That's not what he said at all , but even making the distinction makes you one of "them" and politicizes the workplace. It's just dis…

She's not wrong. He shared a manifesto about gender differences in the workplace. In it, he calls women neurotic. Whether people's read on the manifesto is reductive of his overall argument isn't the point. He showed a serious lack of judgement writing and posting that in his workplace. He should not have played the part of expert gender/psychology expert. A researcher he cites specifically disagrees with his takeawa…

damn bro, i hope she sees this

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#299

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:25 PM UTC

martin_bech wrote: post #246

jacobmoe wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been endless discussion about Damore. In particular podcasts you'd think that the firing of a random engineer at Google ranked alongside 9/11 as a defining event in modern history. If I circulated a memo to my co-workers that not only opposed a new policy from management, but did obvious harm to the expressed intent of that policy, I might be fired. It doesn't matter if the memo I circulated would have gotten…

The fact you wrote this comment, tells me, that you never read his memo.

I did read the memo and this synopsis of it reads true to me in broad strokes.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#300

Post by thu2111 » Sat, May 09, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #271

pinkfoot wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise. We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.

> Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? Techbros. Techbros everywhere. It's not what people want to hear, most people would love it if the field and the educational pipeline leading to it had more professional norms all-around. But it's a real thing. (FWIW, I don't think of Damore as part of the problem, indeed his proposals would help a lot if widely adopted.…

"Techbros" isn't "a real thing", it's not even a term that means anything. It's just an insult and not even an effective one; what exactly is it meant to imply? A "bro" (young man?) works in tech? So what?

This is why so many men are coming to realise that feminism is propaganda. Someone asks a reasonable question - how exactly is this industry unfriendly to women? It's a simple question, it should be easy to answer. The response is some meaningless schoolyard name calling? There's no discrimination against women in our industry, only discrimination against men and the men who point it out.