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

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#431

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #398

DonHopkins wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would I "please show you" anything after you just proudly announced that you didn't bother reading what I just finished showing you?

If you wanted to make a stronger argument, you should at least pretend to have read what you're glibly dismissing out of hand, instead of preemptively admitting that you don't bother reading what anyone else says, and that there's no point in replying to you.

HN is not a forum for announcing you have not read things, then criticizing and dismissing them anyway. Don't you have better things to do than rationalizing and defending Frat Bro toxicity?

If you don't have time to go through all that, then you shouldn't waste your time replying to dismiss it all, either.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#432

Post by visarga » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

hpcjoe wrote: post #290

throw0101a wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it. It was not about "inclination", but rather that the current engineering culture tended to be lean a certain way when it comes to focus: > Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroti…

There are economic factors associated with being a primary educator. The pay, for lack of a better way to put it, sucks. This impacts men and women. My wife and I went through Physics grad school together. To say that the experience was hostile for her, and many other women, would be an understatement. My daughter is contemplating grad school for next year (senior in college, its been an interesting year). We've been…

> I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment.

Agree, but it's also about preferences. When a woman has to choose between medicine, arts, economics, law, education, IT and other fields, they tend to prefer IT less than men. It's just that there are so many other good options.

If you control by the amount of time invested and passion you would probably see little discrimination.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#433

Post by mardifoufs » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #307

seemslegit wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden did not "defect to Russia", he got stuck in Russia while in transit after the US cancelled his passport.

Your timeline is wrong. Snowden defected to Russia. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden...

That's an opinion article.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#434

Post by wpietri » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #404

StephenAmar wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always assume that what you say could be on the front page of the New York Times.

Engineering is where most of the people go who care more about being right than about what people think of them. There is a reason for that - it usually matters if an approach is right or not in engineering work. Companies like Google need to be able to roll their eyes when engineers start stupid arguments, not sack them. The front-page rule is a technical impediment to people being able to figure out facts. The path…

This wasn't emacs vs vi.

Damore's goal was to materially affect who got hired and how they were treated. That's quite a lot of people, and at one of the world's most prominent companies. Nobody can reasonably expect that he should be able to play at that level and have it be consequence-free when it doesn't go his way.

Damore is welcome to have crackpot opinions. He's even welcome to express crackpot opinions on his own time. But what he was doing was vigorous workplace activism. Activism that not only contradicted the goals of Google execs and the bulk of its employees, but was carried out in a way that actively damaged ongoing Google efforts and caused a significant workplace disruption.

You could argue that Google's management made a mistake in allowing a young engineer this much power in the first place. Or by not reining him in earlier. But rolling their eyes was never an option here because Damore was having a significant negative effect on the company.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#435

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

Nitramp wrote: post #134

smitty1e wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the lady engineers should put out some great work in reply and refute him.

That's not good. Imagine how you'd feel. Imagine people would generally claim that someone who looks like you is a bad engineer (say, someone with your hair color). And then imagine that people would expect you to constantly disprove that assumption, just because of your hair color. You'd be on the edge all the time. You'd never feel at home in the field. And whenever you interact with someone who doesn't have past w…

[deleted]

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#436

Post by wpietri » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

Infinitesimus wrote: post #415

wpietri wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sued them for what, exactly? Quoting a document Damore circulated to thousands of people? Being honest isn't generally a crime. I'll note that you've just imagined the "intention of destroying a person's life" bit. There were plenty of reasons for releasing that that have nothing to do with Damore. Indeed, why would they have anticipated that it would lead to Damore's firing? If that was obvious, then that would have…

> Indeed, why would they have anticipated that it would lead to Damore's firing? If that was obvious, then that would have been obvious to Damore when he wrote it. Not sure I agree. There is no big tech corporation in current America where having your name tied to a memo like that won't destroy your career within the company l. Damore certainly should have expected that if leadership disagreed with him, he was in for…

Go after them for what? In America, you can't just sue people for "you told the truth" or "my own words made me look bad and its your fault".

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#437

Post by twomoretime » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

glenda wrote: post #420

JSavageOne wrote: post #408

It's annoying that Bloomberg refers to the memo as being "political" and expressing "political conservatism". The memo was attempting to explain the underrepresentation of women in tech via biological differences. That has literally nothing to do with politics, and framing it as such misrepresents and discredits the contents of the memo.

I don’t see what’s wrong with calling it political... it surely isn’t scientific. The opinions he expressed seem like naive political theories based on his understanding of gender and society, which is an extremely nuanced topic.

What's naive is bending over backwards to pretend that men and women are identical, after millions of years of sexually dimorphic evolution.

It's absurd that this is even a debate in our society. Scientific? Everything we know about genetics, hormones, and psychology clearly points to gendered differences and if you objectively look at the data, at the very least you must concede that you cannot conflate inequality of outcomes with inequality of outcome opportunity without gratuitous handwaving.

Progressivism in the US takes as a given that men in the past were backwards and ignorant - but there are literally tens of thousands of years of social wisdom in history that are being thrown away because people can't handle the fact that in this world there are no guarantees of equal ability across groups. Anyone who is offended by such a notion is hopelessly naive - but I suppose you can hardly blame someone after spending a lifetime indoctrinated to pretend that gendered differences magically disappear above the shoulders.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#438

Post by fullhd2 » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

Imagine you are the offspring of immigrants who escaped a closed society and made their life in a relatively open one. Now imagine you start a company you fight the good fight and after years of work you created one of the most influential corporate internet giants the works has ever seen.

And you think “okay I am going to use this power to make the world a fairer place so that nobody is ever disadvantages because of historical inequalities.” You have a vision for the world and you set about filling up your company with people that share that vision.

Then one day this little twerp with a phd joins the lower ranks and starts spreading propaganda that stalls this vision. A porpaganda that has potential to steer the world into one that your parents escaped from.

What do you do?

You destroy the little piece of shit. Maybe you pay him off. But then you make sure he stays destroyed.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#439

Post by ravenstine » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

JSavageOne wrote: post #408

It's annoying that Bloomberg refers to the memo as being "political" and expressing "political conservatism". The memo was attempting to explain the underrepresentation of women in tech via biological differences. That has literally nothing to do with politics, and framing it as such misrepresents and discredits the contents of the memo.

Is this what conservatism actually is, now? I'm just wondering because, although I agree that nothing Damore said was conservative in a traditional sense, maybe conservatism has just been made more broad in recent years.

For instance, I don't believe that I'm conservative at all, but my liberal friends and family tend to classify me as "conservative". I find it baffling because most of my beliefs are pretty permissive. Ask me about any individual stance, and I can assure you that the answer will most likely be a liberal one. But I'm considered "conservative" because my ideas are not all Liberal(with a capital-L). For instance, there's nothing particularly conservative about believing that biological sex has a determining(or at least predicting) factor on a person's behavior and preferences, yet because this is a stance that today's Liberalism looks down upon, it's considered de facto conservative merely on that basis. The same goes for things like libertarianism and having negative conclusions about socialism. They don't really have anything to do with being conservative in isolation, but if they aren't Liberal then they can only be conservative, in accordance with how the establishment media judge these things.

There needs to be a different word than conservatism for having positions that aren't part of the Liberal platform, but "conservative" works well from an optics perspective because it's been effectively vilified.

EDIT: LOL Am I being downvoted because I said people think I'm conservative? One of you people please tell me.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#440

Post by mdorazio » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

glenda wrote: post #420

JSavageOne wrote: post #408

It's annoying that Bloomberg refers to the memo as being "political" and expressing "political conservatism". The memo was attempting to explain the underrepresentation of women in tech via biological differences. That has literally nothing to do with politics, and framing it as such misrepresents and discredits the contents of the memo.

I don’t see what’s wrong with calling it political... it surely isn’t scientific. The opinions he expressed seem like naive political theories based on his understanding of gender and society, which is an extremely nuanced topic.

I'm guessing if you read the memo you only read a version with sources and data omitted. The original version was very much science-based, even if you disagree with the science or think it incomplete/biased.