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James Damore and three others end Google suit

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Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m talking about the liability of people sitting in the same context. Are you still talking about what James should or shouldn’t be doing? I’m talking about whether you should incur legal risk for leaking facts about people likes James.

If he wrote that on a memo and distributed it to a dozen colleagues, it's doubtfully a secret. If he were fired for being gay, that'd be against the law on pretty much every civilized country and a couple that wouldn't qualify.

> 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.

This is the original post I'm responding to. If I found an old blog post of yours which revealed life-altering information, should I be sued if I send it to a reporter?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#392
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.

[deleted]

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#393
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's still a great workplace as long as you can discard politics. There are large swathes of people who can't just "discard politics" because they are directly affected by the current political status quo.

Sorry, but if you're talking about Googlers, that's bullshit, they're fine. 200k/yr, 300k/yr+ worth of fine. It's great to have empathy for people in a less fortunate position, and yes we have a lot of problems in our society, but FAANG software engineers are arguably the least oppressed people on the planet.

Is this a class reductionist argument? Are you saying, for example, a black women at Google doesn't deal with adversity and is no longer effected by politics because they make a large amount of money?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m talking about the liability of people sitting in the same context. Are you still talking about what James should or shouldn’t be doing? I’m talking about whether you should incur legal risk for leaking facts about people likes James.

If he wrote that on a memo and distributed it to a dozen colleagues, it's doubtfully a secret. If he were fired for being gay, that'd be against the law on pretty much every civilized country and a couple that wouldn't qualify.

You two are having very different arguments.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#395
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

.. so you'd destroy their life instead?

Outcomes like this inevitable when capital has a concentration of power and labor is not organized.

Damore is a self-described classic liberal so I assume he’s fine with this arrangement.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#396
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and that's not an argument I'd make. But, as Damore suggested in his memo, mightn't these innate differences mean that women are less likely, on average, to prefer careers in software engineering? And mightn't these innate differences also explain why women are strongly over-represented in certain other professions like nursing (91%), elementary and middle school teaching (81%) and social work (80%)?

Any difference between two things might turn out to be responsible for some other difference between the two things. Perhaps men are better at software engineering because they're taller. Perhaps women don't enjoy programming because they have breasts. It is pointless -- and in this context, often harmful -- to speculate.

So, because the cause is uncertain, we should not discuss female under-representation in software development at all?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#397
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Fascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center” —Benito Mussolini

Can you explain what this means?

Fascists have a long history of presenting their movement as a third way, neither right nor left. In fact "ni droite, ni gauche" was a slogan of the far-right French political party Front National, whose founder is on the record having defended the Nazi occupation government.

I don't think Damore is a fascist. However, it seems clear to me that, he, along with a lot of other right-wing figures today are using the exact same tactic as fascists once did by presenting themselves as "centrist." If you don't believe me, check out this Twitter account: https://nitter.net/a_centrism.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.…

Since you don't seem to be aware of it, one thing "bro" strongly and literally implies is Frat Culture. They literally call each other "brothers". In case English isn't your native language, or you're lucky enough to not be familiar with this dark side of American culture, the commonly used terms are "Fraternity Brothers", "Frat Brothers", and "Frat Bros", who become "Tech Bros" when they graduate. And YES, it is a c…

I don't have time to go through all of that. Evan emails seem like nothing burger. Sorry, have you ever met college students or even school students? Both girls and boys. Because they all call each other names, fat/bitch/slut shaming is done more by other girls to girls than boys.

Again, only saw emails.

Even then, all of that seems more outlier than any programming community. Not everyone is a billionaire programmer responsible for putting social media cringe in front of our eyes.

Please show me convicted for [reason] reports. I am convinced everytime I read these articles, the author is trying to see things that aren't there or it's hard to verify the validity.

Note that I don't condone the behaviour but should you really be painting majority of population as some sort of saint to highlight the evil? Because they aren't.

Alcoholism and drug rate among youngsters says otherwise.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought as well. You see liberals invited onto conservative outlets for genuine debates / opinions. Rarely see liberal outlets do the same as guilt by association, causing anyone who's ever been in the same room as an 'alt-right' to be tainted, seem to be rampant.

Most news agencies besides Fox struggle to get Republicans to agree to appear on the show. CNN famously lambasted Republican lawmakers for refusing to appear after the shootings in Dayton and El Paso last year. What you have described is that liberal lawmakers are willing to face adversarial news coverage while conservatives are unwilling to do so.

The comment was not about lawmakers though, plenty of conservative pundits / people like Damore that want to share their stuff but are treated like they're radioactive.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a geek with 0 real life experience outside Google know that? It is not what they told him about "internal discussions".

The people that want everything made explicit and all lies banished from human relations lost, have always lost, and will always lose. I recognize that for some this imposes significant hardship but changing everyone else’s human nature is not a reasonable accommodation. The kindest thing those of us that know young people of this type can do is pull them aside and explain how the world works. It is unkind to feed th…

Strongly disagree. I think it would be both feasible and good to change culture to be more tolerant of "tone-deaf" speech.
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