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

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#631

Post by dralley » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #484

ABeeSea wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He failed the green eggs and ham test for written communication at work. >Would you like this in the press? >Would you like this at Brand X? >Like to read it on the stand? >Like it in the government's hand? https://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2006/12/over_at_white_...

I think his failure was just naivete. He thought Google wanted legitimate feedback or would support intellectual honesty over popularity. That was wrong.

I mean, the authors of some of the studies Damore cited came out and said that he was misrepresenting them and that they disagreed with the conclusion he drew from them.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#632

Post by will4274 » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

glenda wrote: post #450

twomoretime wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I never mentioned any of the theories in your response. There are all kinds of people who study gender in society from every possible angle, Damore doesn’t strike me as an expert in the field. Just a typical engineer who thinks he knows everything.

> Damore doesn’t strike me as an expert in the field. Just a typical engineer who thinks he knows everything.

FWIW, Damore has a masters in systems biology. This fact was fairly widely reported. So, you can fall back on the facts instead of your own biases (what "strikes" you).

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#633

Post by ergothus » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #568

ergothus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. That's not what he said at all, As someone that also read it, those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying. A facade of misrepresented psuedoscience doesnt change the intent, motivation, or reality.

You can’t do that. You have to judge based on what was written, not what you’ve convinced yourself was an ulterior motive and dismissing his actual words as a facade. This behavior is so perplexing. It is not what he was saying. Why do so many people absolutely insist on misinterpreting it to the point of willful distortion?

You are literally describing critical thinking. To assume no one would lie, mislead, or even just be blind to their own biases is to be part of the problem.

How did I "convince myself of an ulterior motive"? I read what was written, and then I asked questions and did research. Are these studies he cites credible? [No]. Why would he bring these up? What motivations would be involved? How do the people he is talking about feel? Did he consider their feelings? If I were Google, what are my options, and what are the results of those options?

Dog-whistles and micro-aggressions thrive on failure to ask these questions. It empowers the status quo to entrench so long as they avoid the absolute most stark of statements.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#634

Post by ALittleLight » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #486

wpietri wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fascinated that on HN of all places people are suggesting that engineers should never be allowed to express opinions about workplace policy.

They are allowed. But they also need to take responsibility for the consequences of their message. If you alienate half of your colleagues, you'll probably get fired.

Google didn't fire Damore when he wrote the memo. They didn't fire him when he shared it for feedback. They didn't fire him when it was internal discussion. They fired him when it leaked to press and there was a social media furor.

The idea that Google fired Damore for anything other than bad publicity is not supported by evidence. They asked him for feedback. He provided an intelligent and well researched document. They debated it. A social media mob got mad, and Google, being greedy cowards, fired Damore.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#635

Post by yahyaheee » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

JSavageOne wrote: post #601

wpietri wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has everything to do with politics. Go take a look at the various declarations of secession when the slaveholding US states tried to quit and form the Confederacy. A number of them explicitly mention that a system of racial slavery is fine because black people were naturally inferior, which is how in the 1850s one would have said "biological differences". That was very obviously politics. Further, there's an eno…

So what are you trying to say, we shouldn't be allowed to talk about gender differences? There's an enormous difference between the references you made because they are all trying to rationalize treating a race/gender as inferior. On top of that, there is no real scientific evidence backing anything up and it all basically amounts to inferring causation from correlation (ie. they are inferior because they are poor).…

Exactly, and he went on to offer more ways by which they could get women into tech based on that study. But I guess that makes you a misogynist

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#636

Post by awinder » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

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’m pretty sure that google’s “unwritten rule” is THE unwritten rule of society though, which is basically beware of pissing off the mob / be insufferable at your own peril. Asking companies to seriously outline every facet of life there is the ultimate guardrails culture request.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#637

Post by ravenstine » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

spangry wrote: post #590

JPKab wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right wing science deniers focus on global warming and evolution denial. The left is nuclear power and biology denial. Overlap on antivax. Welcome to being hated by both sides of you actually use science to form your opinions, rather than justify preconceived beliefs.

Evolution seems to be gaining traction in some ultra right wing circles, albeit in support of other distasteful ideas...

That can be kind of a good thing, though, right? Gay marriage and evolution are already arguments that are falling off the conservative map at a rapid place. In another 20 years, will "conservatives" effectively be just liberals who don't like socialism? That seems to be the way that politics have been boiling down to: socialism vs capitalism. Everything else is kind of adjacent, but as laws get passed or ideas get effectively mocked on the internet, they drop off because they aren't core to those two fundamental ideas.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

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Post by dane-pgp » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #424

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully every other part of your online life is under a difficult to guess pseudonym if you write anything even remotely controversial, because the social justice mob is only looking for scalps, not justice.

Not sure how that's relevant here. He published under his real name, at work.

Maybe the lesson here, then, is "If a company really wants honest discussion of controversial ideas, they should provide a means for people to carry out those discussions with anonymity."

A similar thing happened at a company I worked for, where the new COO wanted to make a name for himself by creating an "ask the CEO" email address which any employee could write a question to. Answers would then be shared (anonymously) with the whole company each week at a regular "town hall" meeting.

Seeing the potential for the company to abuse this medium, I stayed late one night and whipped up a web page on a dev server which allowed people to write questions without giving their name or email address, and the page would then use a generic account to forward the question to the "ask the CEO" address.

A spark of wisdom in my mind did prompt me to personally email the COO first with a link to this site, asking for permission, but after 24 hours passed without a reply, I decided to send the link out to everyone in the company...

Shortly after that, a friendly colleague from the Ops team informed me that his boss (who saw himself as the enforcer of company discipline) had demanded that the dev server hosting the website be shut down and my access revoked. I took the hint and moved the files on the server so that the link 404'ed.

From the tech support emails I received after that, it seemed that there were at least a few colleagues that were interested in making use of my anonymisation service. The COO did eventually email back with a short reply along the lines of "This wasn't what I was expecting", and later, at the next town hall meeting, he explained that his belief in "transparency" meant that the company was prepared to answer questions, but equally meant that they demanded to know the identities of the questioners.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#639

Post by temporalparts » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

I don't understand why people are characterizing his firing as political. If you read his memo, it should be clear that he was fired for being sexist. His memo included a section which stated that women are biologically inferior to men. This immediately makes it very difficult to work with him for women and their allies. I know tech skews male, but software engineers have to interface with many other teams and many other functions, especially at Google. If he actually left out the biological differences claim, Google might not have fired him, but that section left Google no choice. I support discourse in general, but from a business/society perspective, you can't immediately make it difficult for a large plurality of your peers (and vast majority if you include allies) to work with you.

This is only political because right-wing political organizations have chosen to defend someone's sexist memo AFTER THE FACT, to drive the narrative of how Google is anti-right and is a left-wing puppet company. Calling this a political firing is only coopting their ridiculous narrative that he was fired for expressing "conservative values" or their sexist narrative that those conservative values include the fact that women are biologically inferior.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#640

Post by throwaway9963 » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

piflon wrote: post #563

wpietri wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked at Google, so I can't say for sure. But from what I hear, there's plenty of disagreement. And Google may have generally asked for feedback. But I'm pretty sure they didn't say, "Hey, James, could you write a maximally divisive political opinion piece attacking a bunch of important internal efforts and implying that anybody who doesn't agree with you is just a villain in an Ayn Rand novel?"

They said "please share your opinion on this specific topic [the low proportion of women in engineering]." Regardless of how you color his response, they asked for exactly what he gave.

(I worked at Google at the time)

This is false.

Why are people claiming Google solicited his feedback? Is that how the news was reported? If it was a feedback, it wouldn't have been written in a Google Doc, and shared in an internal mailing list.

It was written during a time when diversity in tech was the topic du jour. The mailing list was for political discussion / unpopular opinions, and was known for heated debates. It didn't draw a lot of discussion at first. A few weeks later, the memo somehow made its way to the internal meme site, where a majority of Googlers frequent. That's how the whole company learned about it and how the issue blew up.