Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

James Damore and three others end Google suit

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#451

Post by mdorazio »

wpietri wrote: post #436
Infinitesimus wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

In America you can sue anyone for anything at any time. Whether you will win or not is another matter, but if you've never been to jury duty the court system is absolutely packed with cases that seem absurd. In this instance, it would be perfectly plausible to sue for something like emotional distress.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#452

Post by xtreme »

glenda wrote: post #427
ravenstine wrote: post #390

Damore was not offered a chance to receive forgiveness by either the company or the outrage mob, therefore I don't respect what people generally have to say about whether what he did was right or wrong. It's astounding that people are still debating this in this very HN thread. A society of any size that makes virtue claims while simultaneously adding an undue price to being wrong or insensitive deserves to be mocked…

I agree with you in theory, but it’s a bit different. If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people then I certainly would have no issue firing him. You are free to hold any belief you want, but once you’re in my ear with some misinformed ideas that are potentially hurtful to a large group I am free to tell you to be quiet or leave. Of course, it’s your right not to listen to me... bu…

> If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people then I certainly would have no issue firing him.

Would you be okay with firing an LGBT person because they "made the workplace less comfortable" for some conservative employees?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#453

Post by glenda »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #445
glenda wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in theory, but it’s a bit different. If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people then I certainly would have no issue firing him. You are free to hold any belief you want, but once you’re in my ear with some misinformed ideas that are potentially hurtful to a large group I am free to tell you to be quiet or leave. Of course, it’s your right not to listen to me... bu…

What happens if two groups/sides are equally discomforted by the other? Do you silence/fire them both? Is it majority rule?

I don’t have a good answer. But at that point some kind of outside discussion facilitation is probably necessary.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#454

Post by Igelau »

fullhd2 wrote: post #438

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…

Destruction for anyone who would "stall the vision"

Achievement unlocked: Violent Authoritarian Despot

> offspring of immigrants who escaped a closed society

Achievement unlocked: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#455

Post by JSavageOne »

ashtonkem wrote: post #410
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 think that’s extremely short sighted. Gender politics is politics; anything that comes close to the subject is either already political or will become political extremely quickly.

> Gender politics is politics

I don't understand how that statement discredits anything I said.

Politics is peoples' opinions and is subjective/normative (eg. things "ought" to be this way). Science attempts to explain how nature works (eg. this is why things are this way), and is objective. That memo was not political.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#456

Post by glenda »

twomoretime wrote: post #449
glenda wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in theory, but it’s a bit different. If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people then I certainly would have no issue firing him. You are free to hold any belief you want, but once you’re in my ear with some misinformed ideas that are potentially hurtful to a large group I am free to tell you to be quiet or leave. Of course, it’s your right not to listen to me... bu…

>but once you’re in my ear with some misinformed ideas How the hell do you expect to get anything done in a society if you presume that any hurtful idea is misinformed? How can you seriously pretend that gendered differences in humans magically stop above the shoulders? You're denying realty. It's black and white. You can bend over backwards and sweep rational arguments like Damore's under the rug, or you can accept…

I don’t think it is a rational argument though?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#457

Post by BurningFrog »

ravenstine wrote: post #439
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 permissiv…

This is tribal politics. If you're not with us, you must be in the other tribe.

Reasoned ideology has long ago left the room.

This goes for both tribes, of course. With some exceptions on both sides.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#458

Post by michael_j_ward »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #377
gameswithgo wrote: post #174

Google has fired a few people, liberal and conservative, for being politically insufferable. Multiple people in the news about this on various places in political spectrum. It doesn’t mean they were wrong.

Who are the high-profile liberals that got fired from Google; I can't think of any, but the only person I can recall Google firing for political views is Damore. I wouldn't be surprised if they had filed any liberals; but they certainly didn't get equivalent media coverage as Damore.

Maybe not "liberal" but certainly "not-conservative"

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-fo...

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#459

Post by ravenstine »

twomoretime wrote: post #437
glenda wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

It's absurd but, by and large, people don't actually care about science, let alone understand it. They may occasionally appreciate the rewards of science, but only when it makes them happy. When it sends a negative signal, people are quick to ignore science, or only pay attention to tidbits of science that reinforces their world view. It's not even a question of intelligence. Smart people all the time, including on this very site, fall prey to both anti-science and "scientism" at about the same rate. The only difference between a smart human and a dumb human in this space is the smart human has a bigger vocabulary and knows how to cherry-pick data.

Damore might have been granted some more understanding if he had presented his memo to some scientists. Even then, there would have been a high probability that he would have been told to hush-hush or be asked to leave.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#460

Post by glenda »

xtreme wrote: post #452
glenda wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in theory, but it’s a bit different. If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people then I certainly would have no issue firing him. You are free to hold any belief you want, but once you’re in my ear with some misinformed ideas that are potentially hurtful to a large group I am free to tell you to be quiet or leave. Of course, it’s your right not to listen to me... bu…

> If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people then I certainly would have no issue firing him. Would you be okay with firing an LGBT person because they "made the workplace less comfortable" for some conservative employees?

Sure, if they are publishing documents about how straight people are less effective at their job then they’re causing unnecessary issues in the workplace.
Post reply on HN